


Skyrim: Conspiracy in Threes

by continuum



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Established Relationship, Exes, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Politics, Polyamory, Strategy & Tactics, no Original Characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-01-19 12:39:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 44,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1470154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/continuum/pseuds/continuum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[This work is no longer actively in progress.]  There is only one Dragonborn, and his name is Ulfric Stormcloak.  As he battles his way towards Solitude to take his throne, those close to him must fight for the fate of Skyrim.  Others throughout the land rise and fall in power in an intricate web of politics, war, love, and betrayal.  An intimate story of flawed people who are in over their heads.</p><p>Main Quest, Civil War, College of Winterhold, Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, Companions, No Original Characters, No DLC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Warrior's Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, there are currently no plans to add chapters to this work. I hope you can still enjoy what has been posted so far!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is only one Dragonborn, and his name is Ulfric Stormcloak.

Chapter One: A Warrior’s Heart

Windhelm, 19th Last Seed, 4E 201

The dragon crouched, torn wings half-folded over its back, its bulk dominating the courtyard of the Palace of the Kings. Galmar picked himself up from where the tail had smashed him into the wall. Favoring his ribs with shallow breaths, he hefted his battleaxe and eyed the bloodied right flank. Only his speed and his wits would protect him from the gouts of flame there. But Yrsarald was already on its left, axe hacking at a foreleg while his shield-arm hung limp and broken. Arrows rained down upon the beast, bouncing from its thick clay-colored scales and occasionally finding their mark.

Galmar Stone-Fist had never trembled before any beast or man. He had felt the tearing claws of a sabrecat. He had faced the uncanny magicks of sorcerers. He had held back the army of elves at Red Ring Road. But until just this morning, dragons had been legends. Ever so slightly, he trembled.

His liege lord and boon companion, with more steel in his heart, stood before the mythical beast and raised his veteran’s-axe in defiance. Ulfric Stormcloak, hero of the Battle of Red Ring Road, liberator of Markarth, Jarl of Windhelm and now High King of Skyrim, roared a challenge that Galmar had not heard since the days of the war. The High King’s Voice, no ordinary sound but a gift of the Divines, echoed off the high stone walls and deafened Galmar even to the answering shriek from the dragon. The very air crushed inwards in a thunderclap of sound, and the monster reared its head, stunned, as the King charged in to score the underbelly of the beast in a wide crescent of hot blood. Galmar found his own mortal voice and, using his friend’s name as his battle cry, embedded his battleaxe in the dragon’s neck with all his strength.

When the great maw dipped, flame spitting and dribbling, Ulfric did not hesitate but leapt bodily onto its ugly head, anchored by his axe until he straddled the beast and hacked at its eyes and snout while it bucked wildly. When its body collapsed and its head came crashing to the ground, Ulfric jumped clear with all the swagger Galmar would have expected of him twenty years ago. His upraised fist garnered wild cheers from the Windhelm guards, even while his eyes raked prudently over his companions. Ulfric himself was drenched crimson on his hastily-donned breastplate, the dragon’s blood splattered on his triumphant face and greying wheat-gold hair. “For Windhelm!” he boomed, to greater uproar. “For Skyrim!”

Heat was radiating from the dragon’s carcass. Swiftly, he and Ysarald joined Ulfric before the gathering crowd of citizens. The younger commander shed his shield and grimaced as he tossed back a red potion, critically appraising his heat-blistered mending arm. Hoping it would scar, no doubt. Even while Ulfric addressed his people, Galmar kept a fascinated eye on the dragon as its scales sloughed off and caught fire, like embers taking flight from a dry crackling log, smelling faintly of peat. Still playing to the crowd, Ulfric turned to gaze upon his work. Parts of the dragon burst into full flame, and soon it was a bonfire. All three of them took judicious steps away from the growing heat. Ulfric turned back to his people, standing before one of the courtyard braziers.

Something else was happening, in the depths of the carcass. White-violet sparks, then arcs like the glow of an aurora shot from the blaze and converged on the King, whipping past with enough force to blow Galmar’s hair into his face. He was close enough to see Ulfric’s composure stiffen in surprise. Both of his companions started towards him, feeling nothing from the brightening ribbons of light. But Ulfric held up his hands to halt them, showing that he was unharmed. The dragon’s clean bare bones were now glowing a cool white, and Ulfric seemed to draw the energies into himself, the light settling under his skin and fading. A great silence had fallen over the assembled people of Windhelm. Ulfric stood a moment longer, as if his attention were turned inwards, then gathered himself. It struck Galmar particularly then, when he spoke, that Ulfric had the deepest voice of any man he’d ever known. His voice was not only a God-given power over dragons, but a mortal power over men as well.

“Thanks be to Akatosh,” Ulfric intoned, not loudly. “Thanks be to Akatosh for the gift of a dragon-soul. Thanks be to the Nine, for this blessing of our glorious cause and the freedom of Skyrim. Thanks be for this omen of our power and our victory.” He raised his face to the open sky. “May Talos guide our steps.” The High King nodded left and right to his shield-brothers and, skirting the pile of inert bleached bones to Galmar’s side, withdrew to his Palace. He gave no pause when the ground shook and the very sky cracked and boomed with a Voice’s summons.

Galmar declared the skeleton to be the property of the people of Windhelm, free to take a memento and bear historic witness. It took the strength of both him and Yrsarald to pick up the dry skull by its horns and carry it off to Ulfric’s throne room.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

“One dragon is a miracle,” Ulfric rumbled. “Two dragons is a warning.” He had cast aside his breastplate and sprawled himself on the throne with an uncharacteristic restless energy. His fine fur-trimmed leather was stained on the arms where the plate had not covered it. “That was not the same dragon I saw at Helgen. If there are two, then there are more.”

Jorleif, the King’s steward, hurried into the great hall with flagons of watered wine. Sifnar followed close behind with a basin of lavender water. Ulfric downed a flagon and ignored the offered basin, while Yrsarald gratefully washed his hands and splashed his face. Galmar pulled at the straps of his breastplate and let it fall to the floor before refreshing himself. He gave his ribs a few hard knocks, but they felt bruised, not broken. Now in private, Ulfric had reverted to the glowering mood that had loomed over him all day since his return from Helgen. This was not a man who took defeat well. He took captivity even less well. Adding betrayal to the mix, and uncertainty, made the ambush at Darkwater Crossing the perfect weapon against the High King.

“They can be killed,” Yrsarald offered. “That is what we learned today.”

“My lord,” added Jorleif, “the call, the summons, surely it was for you.”

Ulfric glanced at Galmar. “ _Doh-vah-kin_ , the old men summoned. Dragonborn.”

“My lord, the prophecy—”

“I know what the prophecy says, Jorleif. Yrsarald, you were telling me the news from the north.”

“Skald writes that the sea-front is locked. Solitude’s navy is enough to hold the fjords but no more, and Thalmor reinforcements surely could not arrive before the winter storms. Dawnstar’s mines are doing very well. He says his men will spend the winter building a fleet the likes of which Skyrim has never seen—especially if Eastmarch can redouble the lines in southern timber while the passes are still open. However, milord, if we think the war will not last to spring, Dawnstar’s men could be ordered to Morthal by land instead.” He paused. “Skald had something else to say, too. Some dark magick haunts the town. And he’s not one to jump at ghosts. The men might be glad to get away.”

“ _If_ the war doesn’t last,” Jorleif emphasized. “With respect, Commander, doesn’t that depend entirely on whether we can trust the court of Riften?”

“Aye, it does. But _troops_ are my domain, not the machinations of some rich southern elf-friends.”

“You’ve been awfully quiet, Galmar.” Ulfric’s deep murmur commanded the ear more firmly than Yrsarald’s harsh brogue or Jorleif’s measured tones. “What do you think?”

It was time to lay his cards on the table. “We simply don’t know who betrayed the fast-march. It could have been Riften—though Gods know we paid them enough for passage through the Hold. And Laila herself gave a rousing speech for a free Skyrim. Then again, it could have been one of our own men. It could just be the Empire has good scouts. Hell, it could have been the Thieves Guild.” Jorleif, at least, twitched a smile at his joke. The Thieves Guild’s decline into impotence was widely known and celebrated. “But any pause in the southern offensive is more time for Cyrondiil to reinforce Falkreath. The South must be taken this winter if it will be taken at all.”

“I agree,” Ulfric rumbled. “And the dragon has cleared the pass. It is hard to tell which side suffered more losses this week.”

“There’s another matter I was looking into before… you were away. The Jagged Crown. A symbol of a time before jarls and moots, a time when a king was a king because his enemies fell before him, and his people rose because they loved him. I’ve traced the crown to the ruins of Korvanjund.”

“A legend,” Yrsarald muttered, but even he had the wit to see the response before it came.

“Dragons were a legend too, yet here they are,” Galmar replied. “The Dragonborn are god-Emperors from distant history, yet here one sits. The crown is made of the teeth and bones of dragons. Skyrim needs a king out of a legend. You must be that king, Ulfric. You _are_ that king.”

“You’re certain you’ve found it?”

The Ulfric of days ago wouldn’t have dawdled in pointless questions. Galmar hoped that this was a quickly-passing mood. “In thirty years, when have I ever been false with you?”

“If you go fetch it, who will I send to negotiate with Riften?”

“I was thinking Wuunferth, actually. Word has it that Laila’s wizard hasn’t found what ails her son. It would be a gesture of good faith—if she was uninvolved—and a powerful placement, as the old wizard is not one to be trifled with. And he might be able to learn things that a more… official diplomat would not.”

“And it would get him out of my court,” Ulfric agreed. “Magic is a tool of elves and weaklings. But why send a man I do not trust?”

“He was your father’s man,” Galmar said carefully. “And old men are set in their ways. I would not trust him as I trust myself, but I would trust him to speak truth to his Jarl and his King. He will report what he sees in Laila’s court.”

“Fine. And I suppose you will enjoy crawling through a mouldering dungeon more than sipping mead in a vipers’ nest.”

“You know me too well.”

Ulfric shifted on his throne, then came to a decision. “We will ride there together. Tomorrow morning. Like old times. When we get back, I will go to High Hrothgar. Arnegeir will not have the satisfaction of summoning the High King whenever he pleases.” He drummed his fingers. “The Jarls want to be on the winning side. The crown, and the affirmation of the Greybeards, may be just what we need.” After a moment lost in thought, he waved them a dismissal, as if he’d already forgotten they were there. Ysrarald retreated to his map room. Jorleif went to do those thousand things he always seemed to be doing to keep the Palace running smoothly. Galmar approached his King, his friend.

“You never finished telling me the whole story,” he prompted softly.

Ulfric sighed and followed him out of the hall, snagging two bottles of mead on the way.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

They sat in their habitual chairs in Ulfric’s chambers, the small table between them laden with mead to refill their goblets. At Galmar’s insistence, Ulfric had scrubbed the dragon-blood from his arms and face. His tale continued. 

“As the keep crumbled above us, Ralof and I wound through the dungeons, hoping that a passage or sewer would conduct us from the doomed fortress. They had taken our arms, our armor, but we took their jerkins and swords and slaughtered them at every turn. In time, we followed a group to the water-way beneath the keep and from there into the caverns that underlie so many of the old forts. It was infested with spiders and home to a bear, but these proved little challenge.

“As we emerged into the snow, the dragon flew overhead towards the mountains. I do not doubt, from what I saw, that Helgen lies a gutted ruin. We waited awhile near the road to watch for other survivors. If there were any, they did not come our way.

“Ralof, hailing from nearby Riverwood, begged my leave to warn his wood-built town. But I would not… impose on the goodwill of the simple people. Balgruuf professes to be neutral, but I would not place myself on his doorstep. I turned east, retracing the road that had brought us to Helgen. I wore the enemy’s colors, out of necessity rather than deception. I had a sword, a bow and quiver, and a day’s bread to my name.”

Ulfric paused, turning his goblet to watch it glint in the candlelight. “Do you know how long it has been, Galmar, since I was alone? Even here, listen—you can hear the footfalls of the guard. The walls breathe, in a place as old as this. There was not another soul with me in that snowy pass. When I met a hunter ahorse, she gave me a ‘goodday’, not a salute or a battle cry.

“I climbed the pass as evening fell, hoping to kill what scouts I found, and to avoid the main of the Imperial force. But again, Sir Dragon had leant me aid. He had flown more swiftly than I to the pass, and laid waste to the Legion’s camp. I saw too, in a pile to be burnt, the bodies of our own men, the remnants of the previous night’s battle, which I had overheard from my captivity.”

A longer pause, to pour his fill. “I did not search for your body, Galmar. I knew that you must have survived. And, besides, it was a dark night.” Ulfric’s face flickered, unreadable.

“One of the miners had reached Windhelm in the morning,” Galmar said softly. “Darkwater was loyal enough for that. I rode to Nilheim, gathered the army as fast as I could. But you were over the pass before we could catch you. It was a bad fight. We were routed. I had to sound the retreat. I looked, for any other way—”

“You did the right thing.”

”The rebellion would not continue without you. They know that.”

“Then I will endeavor to stay alive,” he drawled. “In any case, the pass was held by precious few men, awaiting reinforcements from Neugrad. I fell upon them in the evening and killed a good many, but their Altmer commander put an arrow through my shoulder. I retreated towards a cavern, and they did not follow.”

“I learned very soon why. No great beast dwelt in that cavern, but rather men. The first I killed for his furs and a helm that would cover my face. I was famished and exhausted, and in this attire I thought to join with the bandits against our common enemy. But when I approached to parlay with the woman roasting a sizzling skeever, she was too welcoming, her eyes too eager. I shook off her charms, realizing that I’d stumbled into a nest of vampires. As much as I wanted to leave them to harass the Imperials, I wanted a meal and a safe bedroll more.

“So I ventured deeper into the nest, and did battle against enthralled soldiers who thanked me with their dying breaths. Though I knew they’d joined up against me, I did not wish this fate on any man. I cut down unnatural women whose spells sapped at my will. In the depths of their cavern, the vampire-sorceresses had arrayed implements of torment and dark magick. In their inner sanctum, I slew the queen-mistress of the coven at the altar to her Daedric lord. A night’s peace was hard-won and ill enjoyed.

“In the wee morning, well-supplied, I stole a bay mare from the camp and descended the mountains into the rainy birch forests of Riften. Not knowing who I was, the Imperial soldiers chased me only half-heartedly to a nearby ruin, which it happened was infested with real bandits, and I made off in the fray.

“I took my midday meal at a treasure-hunter’s camp, with two women who, once they were assured I had no interest in their cache, were happy to regale me with stories. It was a rare pleasure, Galmar, to take a rest from the throne and circlet and to be, for a day, a simple traveler. Still, a godforsaken afternoon drizzle quickly washed the romance of freedom away; as if happiness were as fickle as the sky. Nilheim, I saw, lay abandoned.”

“Laila did not give us leave to garrison the fort.”

“So I surmised. It seems she prefers bandits to loyal men. By evening, I reached Darkwater Crossing to greet Thorygg and the garrison you’d left behind. Just as suddenly, my quietude was over. He found me a cuirass and ordered a feast.”

“Your courier caught up with me here a few hours later. You can imagine my relief.”

“And this morning, I rode the last leg. That legion horse really is quite steadfast and fresh, though she is no warhorse. I might keep her.”

Galmar did not let him finish so easily. “What happened at Darkwater Crossing?”

Ulfric’s eyes were sharp despite the mead. “As I said, the ambush—”

“No, last night. Thorygg’s report, the miners…”

Ulfric’s voice could be as dangerously soft as it could roar. “You’re asking if I was angry? Yes, I was angry. I was damn angry. A small force of Imperials with mules and wagons killed every one of Thorygg’s scouts and marched right under Nilheim in plain daylight.”

“He fought well at the pass.”

“I know. He gave me a thorough report, every thing he would have done differently, every thing he would do on the next assault. He’s a good thinker, a better fighter, but he’s just so damn young. He doesn’t know how to run a fortress or lead men. But I need Yrsarald here, and you by my side. That is why I must be on the front when the fighting starts in earnest.”

“He watched how I placed the assault, asked all the right questions. He’ll be a quick study. The lad idolizes you, you know.”

Ulfric stared into his cup. “He followed my orders without hesitation, at Darkwater.”

Galmar felt his body go very still, a familiar loose tension. “What orders were those?”

“To take the little girl into the house. And then to kill the traitors, every one.”

“Were they all traitors?”

“Some of them were. Someone showed the Imperials where to camp. Someone told them when we’d arrived, when we’d gone abed. Someone betrayed our scouts. A dozen men died there, shot in the back or with a dagger to the throat. Did that harlot seduce a man to turn his head? Surely some of those arrows belonged to the woman who’d boasted of her archery. Or her husband? And the Dunmer—I know his people have no love for me. Would you crow his innocence? I put a sword in each of their hands before I killed them, but not a one took the chance to die like a Nord. They died begging and blubbering.”

“What about the man who rode all night to warn us of your capture?”

“Give him a reward. Make him overseer of the mine. I don’t care.”

“And what of the child?”

“The child? I suppose she’s been taken to the orphanage in Riften.”

“You acted in anger.”

“Yes, I acted in anger! Darkwater Crossing cost me good men. Cost Skyrim a victory in Falkreath. Set back the war. And—and put me in chains again.” He drank deep, and refilled. In the last two years, Galmar had never seen Ulfric take more than three goblets. But tonight, the High King was in his cups.

“Talk to me, Ulfric.”

He began again slowly. “They took our colors, left us in shirts, bound our hands. They stuffed and gagged me. On the mountains we walked, and they used the horses’ whips to hurry us. Neither the sting of the lash nor their words of humiliation touched me. I wanted to kill them all with my bare hands, throttle them and bash their heads against the rocks and throw them from the cliffs. I wanted to Shout them to pieces.”

“You—”

“Instead, I killed the people of Darkwater Crossing. I don’t know who betrayed me. I just don’t know. I killed them all.”

“And was it wrong?”

A snarl flashed across his face. “Yes, it was _wrong_.” He swallowed the outburst in drink, and seemed to lose track of what he’d been about to say. Eventually, he started again. “They lead me to the block, pushed me down. That Legate, the one who’d lead the ambush, was three paces behind me. I was resolved to throw myself at him, to throttle him if I could. I wished I had such a chance with Tullius. But then—I looked up, and _she_ was there.”

“You mean R—”

“Elenwen.”

Galmar closed his mouth in a hard line. Ulfric continued over his pause.

“She was watching me from atop her horse. I’ve never— the fight left me, Galmar. I was unmanned. I knew that the moment I moved, she would strike me down. But that was not it—my death would still have been a good one if I’d died on my feet, trying to fight. Galmar, it would be my shame and undoing if I spoke a word of this to anyone but you. But my head sank back to the block. I felt then, as I have never felt before, that I was about to die. A sheer— helplessness— came over me, as the elk bends his heavy head to the wolves in the end. I was not a king, I was not a soldier, I was not a man, in that moment. Perhaps— Talos forgive me. I was in shackles again, in the dank and dark, I belonged to her, and she watched me. I forgot myself. I wanted to die.”

“But you didn’t. And perhaps she did, in the dragon attack.”

“You know, I can’t bring myself to believe that for a moment. She did not leap into action, when the dragon came. She sat on her horse and watched, watched me scramble to my feet. I ran for cover, like the others.”

“Your Voice was bound, you could not challenge a dragon.”

“ _I’m not finished with you._ It was as if she were saying _I’m not finished with you_. It was the same as— that’s what she did, Galmar. That’s what she does. She makes you think you’re about to die, makes you go beyond the fear of it and makes you yearn for it, and then snatches it away. Is it possible? That the Thalmor have summoned dragons to Skyrim?”

Galmar took the goblet from his friend’s numb hands. His gut twisted at the sight of Ulfric in this state. He knew so little of his time as a prisoner of the Thalmor during the war. Only that afterwards Elenwen had risen to be Ambassador in Solitude, and that Ulfric was cloaked with unease whenever he visited the capital. If the Thalmor had the power to summon dragons, then their conquest of Tamriel would be the shorter. But Ulfric also had some tendency to see patterns where there were none. The return of the dragons was far from explained. Galmar felt very sober.

“It is possible, but Elenwen’s presence at Helgen does not make it so. The Thalmor are not the only sorcerers in the land. This may be the work of our own College, or some coven or cult. It may be that dragons have returned of their own accord. But Ulfric—this I know. The Greybeards know more about dragons than anyone. They will give you what answers can be had.”

Ulfric pushed himself out of his chair—in dismissal, perhaps, or simply because the mead had given him the call of his bed or chamberpot. Galmar stood too, but did not offer the insult of a steadying hand.

“This too, I know. You are the Last Dragonborn. All of Windhelm has borne witness. You are the one man in the world who can slay the souls of dragons, the hero of prophesy, the heir of Talos himself. No man or mer is your equal, Ulfric.”

The High King finished relieving himself and gave Galmar an unsteady clap on the shoulder. “Only I can be my own undoing, eh Galmar?” He drew back the furs of his bed and lay himself down. “No matter. You’re a good man. Thank you. I know it hasn’t been easy. Thank you, for— staying with me.”

Before withdrawing to his own room, Galmar drew the furs over his king, his shield-brother, his friend, his lover. “Always.”


	2. Walking Winter's Woe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Legate Rikke leads a small expedition to Korvanjund, seeking her past, her future, and a crown for her Queen.

Chapter Two: Walking Winter’s Woe

17th Last Seed, 4E 201.

They lead him to the block, pushed him down. A man who’d once worn proud colors now bent his head rather than look at the crowd who’d gathered to watch him die. Three paces behind him, Legate Rikke stood at the back of the stone dais and tore her eyes away from the street to the Blue Palace. At the small shake of her head, the captain of the city guard stepped forward into the first morning light over the parapets.

“Roggvir, of Solitude. You are found guilty of high treason.” Aldis’ voice carried strong but thick with feeling as he condemned one of his own. “You helped Ulfric Stormcloak flee after he murdered High King Torygg. By opening that gate for Ulfric, you betrayed the people of Solitude and the trust they placed in you as a guardian of this city.”

Aldis raised a hand to silence the fury and insults flung at the luckless traitor. The right of last speech was a matter of respect, a matter of civilization.

With all the dignity of a Nord, the man lifted his head from the block. His bared shoulders tensed, as if he fought an urge to turn and flee or fight. The hooded headsman’s gloves creaked around the axe’s shaft. Roggvir’s eyes searched the hateful crowd. “It was no murder!” he cried at last. “Ulfric Stormcloak challenged King Torygg. He beat the High King in fair combat." He raised his voice over the crowd’s boos. “It is our way! It has always been the way of Skyrim, and all Nords!” The cries of hate rose again. His speech faltered, and his head sunk to the block in heavy resignation. “Talos guide us all.”

The headsman raised his axe and all the crowd held its breath. From her vantage, Rikke caught one glimpse of his face as the blade came down, when bravery twisted into anguish. She mouthed an echo of his words.

The courtyard was utterly still as blood pumped and pooled from the cleanly severed neck. The body slipped from the block with a dull thud. Spectacle over, the people of Solitude muttered as they dispersed.

Rikke joined Aldis in descending from the dais. “He died well,” she offered. “He was an honorable man to the end.”

Aldis’ dark eyes watched the civilians straggle back toward the market and their homes. “Being honorable might make you a good man, but it doesn’t make you right. Be a better world if it did.” He gave a last look over the eight soldiers in red-trimmed leather and fitted helms watching from across the street, their horses’ reins in hand. “Take good care of my boys out there.” He paused with a hand on her arm. “Take good care of yourself, Rikke. And good luck.”

“I’ll bring you back a draugur’s finger-bone,” she grinned. “A crown for the Queen, a trinket for you.” She looked around at the moss-hung high walls, and up the street as they crossed. At the place she was just starting to call home. “Take good care of our city.”

He returned her grin as she swung up into her saddle. “It’s good to hear you finally coming around.”

“All right men, move out!”

The gate-guards of Solitude cranked open the heavy iron door, twice the height of a mounted man. Three weeks ago, Ulfric Stormcloak had passed through this gate, and all of Skyrim had erupted in civil war. Since then, patriotic recruits had flocked to its shadow, seeking training from the best military minds of the land. Sailors and hardened soldiers made it their port of call, the first battles of the war lost in the mists of the Sea of Ghosts. And now, Rikke rode out with a small strike force and a plan to stave off a full-blown popular uprising.

The historical precedent was not lost on her.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

It was raining in Morthal, as it so often did. Heavy curtains of rain that shifted with the winds. The town guards had taken pity on the bedraggled legionnaires, and insisted they lodge in the barracks rather than make a swampy camp. Rikke’s own accommodations were a mixed blessing, as she sipped a fine vintage and cracked steamed mudcrab legs with Jarl Idgrod Ravencrone.

The enigmatic Jarl dabbed her fingers on her moist table-towel and reached across with a sealed parchment in one wizened hand. “A courier passed through just before you arrived. News from the southern front, headed for Solitude. I saved him the trouble of returning with your letter.”

Rikke wiped her fingers and cracked the seal on the missive. She recognized Tullius’ spidery scrawl and efficient brevity.

She read the words once, twice, and let the letter fall to her lap. Jarl Idgrod sat back, leathery lines of her face cast half in shadow. Candlelight glinted, insect-like, in her black eyes. “Good news, or bad?” she murmured.

“Good,” Rikke said flatly. “The war is over. Ulfric Stormcloak was captured two nights ago at the border of Eastmarch.”

“And what is to be his fate?”

Rikke’s lips thinned. “A show of victory for the Empire. A public trial in Cyrondiil, full of flourish and fanfare. He’ll like that; infamy if he can’t have fame. And then… well, then they’ll cut off his head.” Unexpectedly, she saw herself standing behind Ulfric at the Solitude block. Watching as the axe rose high…

“Queen Elisif will want to be there. Will you be going with her?”

She dug her fingers into her palm. “I don’t need to see him one last time, Jarl Idgrod. I was there, in the crowd, when he killed Torygg. I saw him the way the bards will immortalize him. I saw who he is now. But yes, for her I will go.”

“Oh, child. Do not fight yourself. Anger and mourning are the most natural of companions. He was a great and honorable man, and songs will remember him as well for all the good he has done.”

Rikke met the old woman’s deep-set eyes. “As a friend said to me today, being honorable doesn’t make you right. Ulfric was wrong. He’s been wrong for a very long time.” She stared into a candle-flame. “But, yes. I, at least, will remember the hero of Red Ring Road, the liberator of Markarth, and the man I married.”

“He was quite a man. I met him, you know, at the kingsmoot two years ago. He impressed me a good deal more than did his father, in his day. It’s a pity you weren’t there to represent Markarth. Jarl Igmund was not much of a diplomat.”

“I’m not a diplomat either, Jarl Idgrod. I’m a soldier.”

Ingrod’s mouth quirked. “I’ve had a dream, my dear soldier, and I do hope that you might help me interpret one of its meanings.” The Jarl stood, turned to the hearth and hung a kettle of tea from the spit before returning to her seat. Rikke pushed her plate away and waited for the rest of the non sequitur to unravel. It was commonly said that Idgrod was a dreamseer, that she received divine visions without the training of a priestess. It was also commonly said that the Jarl was at least half-mad. Despite her upbringing, or perhaps because of it, Rikke had never felt at ease with either magic or the gods. There was no telling the truth of whether Idgrod was gifted, but every conversation with the old Jarl left her slightly unnerved.

“It is a dream without faces. I dreamt of a woman of war who returned to a secret library burnt long ago in siege. She found only part of what she sought, for a man had been there before her. She pursues that man, but I cannot see whether they are friends or foes. Now, my child, I know of course that you have been much too busy to go searching some library yourself, but in dreams the cause is often substituted for the effect.”

Rikke blinked at the volume of information the Jarl implied in so few words. “If you’re asking how I know that the Stormcloaks have the location of the Jagged Crown, just ask. Yes, their agents beat ours to the old ruined temple. It’s still possible that they’re making a run for Korvanjund. But now they will have no one to crown.”

“Let me tell you something, something few people know. Those of us with the dreamsight, we never dream about others who are god-touched. Ulfric Stormcloak is hidden from me. And so I know that the man you pursue is not Ulfric. Whoever he is— and no, child, my curiosity is sated enough for today— I do not think you are one to pursue a man halfway across Skyrim in order to kill him. I think you pursue him because you are fated to be a diplomat.”

“He was the diplomat,” Rikke said very quietly. “And I do not know the honeyed words that can erase the bad blood between us.”

“Hmm,” Idgrod mused. “I am reminded of— ah, it will come to me in time. To tell the truth, Rikke, there are a great many reasons why I asked you to dine with me, and I wish that we had the leisure to speak on many topics. But as you insist that you are a soldier, I will ask for your aid in a matter of battle. A dark cloud hangs over the future of Morthal. An ancient evil slumbers nearby, and I fear that it shall soon awaken. I do not have the men to drive it out. But you— you are a nexus of decision, in these days to come. Will you return to Morthal, your steadfast ally, with the force to battle this foe?”

“Jarl Idgrod, you’ve been as loyal an ally as the throne could ask for. You supported Torygg at the kingsmoot when he needed you most, and you have been a steady rock for Queen Elisif. But you know that I am on a mission, with precious few men. Send a courier to the Blue Palace— Elisif is passionate about helping her people, and I am sure that she will heed your request for troops, especially now with the news of Ulfric’s capture.”

Idgrod shook her head slowly. “There is a reason I must ask this of you rather than send word to Solitude. I am afraid the Court’s hands are tied in this matter. There are… politics involved. But I also see that your mission is pressing. I only ask that you think of me in a few day’s time upon your return.” She paused. “The darkness grows slowly, but grow it does.”

The kettle on the fire erupted in a shrill whistle.

“When I return,” Rikke promised, “I will see what I can do.”

Idgrod unfolded herself from the chair without hurry, and took up the tea to pour. “That is all I ask. Paths untravelled close around us with every decision, and others open.” She held the kettle poised over Rikke’s cup. “Whatever you may think of me, my dear, I am quite fond of you. I do not know why my fate is tied to yours, but when I glimpse the carved joints of my future, I glimpse you as well.”

Tea poured into the cup with a fragrance out of the past. “You like lavender tea, do you not?”

“How did you—”

“Hush, child. You mustn’t fall prey to superstitious nonsense. Some few things really are coincidences.”

Rikke sipped her tea, and waited for the old woman to say more. But Idgrod sat back and watched her, until the silence grew long. Before she was halfway finished with her cup, Jarl Idgrod pushed herself to her feet. “It is time to sleep, now, Rikke. You have a long day ahead of you.”

Rikke rose, and the Jarl came around to take one of her hands in both of her own. Idgrod’s skin was dry as parchment, and nearly as thin. Her eyes crinkled upward in something like sadness and affection. She sighed and gathered herself, her words suddenly heartfelt. “I wish you strength, my dear. This will be your last and most arduous mission for the war. I will convey the letters you have written for your loved ones. But before you go, you must know—” Idgrod frowned, stopped herself suddenly. “Ah, no, that is not right. Not yet, not yet. Please, pardon an old woman’s poor memory. Three dreams do I have for you, before the end. Twice more will we meet in uncertainty and strife. This is but the first dream, and in that dream, I have seen that no words are needed to convey what passes in the silence of crossed swords.”

“No words, the silence of crossed swords. Jarl Idgrod, can’t you tell all three to me at once?”

The Jarl’s gaze was flinty. “If I did, you would curse me for it.”

Rikke lay in bed that night going over the conversation in her mind. She had heard of the training of diplomats and spies, that they could school their faces and read the intentions of others. But she had no such training. Couched in all the talk of dreams and the unsettling affectations, Idgrod had read her at every turn and the Jarl’s own words had been as vague and empty as an Imperial politician’s speech. Yet at the same time, Rikke felt as though there had been a great deal the old woman had been trying to tell her. And that all of it had slipped her by.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

Rikke cursed the poor visibility and signaled her men into a close formation as fast dull hoofbeats reached them through the snowstorm. They’d spent the morning picking through slushy marshland, but the forested hills of the Pale, with sticks and boulders covered in snow, were just as treacherous for a mounted party. Though they cut across Stormcloak territory far from any main road, now that they emerged from the deep forests nine hands reached for steel or arrows.

Indistinct shouting grew closer, and a wild shot flew high over their heads. The horses shifted and snorted. Shapes grew in the whirling snow.

“Coming through!” Rikke shouted. “We want no part in your quarrel!”

A horse broke through the snowdrift ahead and struggled valiantly at its rider’s urging. The man had no weapon— both hands gripped his reins, and he wore robes whose color was unclear in the storm. An arrow jutted from his back. He cried out as soon as he caught sight of their party. “Please help me! Oh by the gods, please help me! They’ll kill me!” He veered his mount to the side, obviously intending to put the soldiers between him and his pursuit.

Rikke tensed, heels poised at her horse’s flanks. The experienced warhorse stretched her neck forward and pawed at the ground.

Two robed riders brandishing swords shouted as they broke through the snowbank in hot pursuit. On seeing them, one pulled hard on his reins and his horse shied. The other was not so quick. Rikke kicked, and her palomino surged forward, bringing her into range of contact. A solid blow with her shield was all it took to send the rider tumbling into the snow.

A hot orange glow lit up her field of vision. She yanked the reins hard to one side and swung her shield to bear, in that moment fearing more for her lightly-armored horse than for her own life. The flaming explosion washed over them and Rikke felt her armor heat up to the point of pain, then cool rapidly to the frigid air. She was still mounted, her horse trembling and sweating. Bowstrings twanged behind her. The second horse had lost its rider. Confusion rose to her right, shouts that died down into cries of victory.

“Perimeter watch!” she called. It was a bad place to stop, exposed, in the middle of a snowstorm. There might be more riders out there. She left others to check on the two fallen, and patted her brave mount as she guided her to the back of the group.

She pulled up alongside the man who was slumped over his horse’s neck. His hood was down, showing a pale, drawn face and thick black hair. He looked barely thirty. His robes were a nondescript red, without symbols or patterns to identify him. “How many are there?” Rikke demanded.

“Just three of them,” he gasped, trying to sit up straight. She reached out and grabbed his arm to prevent him from toppling. “Thank you. You saved my life. Thank you.”

She pushed an unstoppered potion into his hands. “Slowly, now. What’s your name? Why were they after you?”

His hands shook too much to bring the vial to his lips. He was muttering, his eyes starting to roll. Rikke leaned in, hooked him under both arms and heaved him onto her saddlehorn, grateful that he was thin and unarmored. “…they turned on me…” he gasped. “I couldn’t open the door…”

One of the soldiers pushed his horse up to her, and she acknowledged his report. “Two shot, dead. The one you knocked down is off on foot. Should we track him?”

“No, we need to keep moving. Any sign of who they were?”

“Robes, simple weapons, nothing fancy. Nothing useful in their pockets. Obviously, one of them was a mage. Horses look packed up for a trip— tents, food, pickaxes and tools. Some kind of expedition.”

Rikke looked thoughtfully at the unconscious man she held. “He couldn’t open the door, he said. An expedition gone wrong. Check your map— I think there’s a lodge nearby for the Vigilants of Stendarr. We’ll leave this poor bastard with them, and hope they’re feeling merciful today.” She raised her voice. “Let’s get moving! It’s not far now to Korvanjund!”

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

“The men are unsettled.” Quaestor Haakig joined her on the ridge above Korvanjund. By virtue of his slight seniority, he’d emerged as the one who approached her on behalf of the younger men. It was something Rikke had never gotten used to about command. The distance it was so important to maintain.

“They had a long ride yesterday. And bandits to fight at the end of it. Some of them saw their first draugr today, though it was a dead one. We’re about to break into a tomb that hasn’t been opened since early in the First Era. I expect them to be unsettled. I also expect them to get over it.”

“It’s not just that. We’re deep in enemy territory, but there’s no sign of the Stormcloaks. I, for one, feel better when I can see my foe.”

“They’re a little busy right now. Dealing with the loss of their leader.”

“Olfeig’s arm healed crooked, Itard woke up today with the wet in his lungs. And that ritual we saw yesterday, the priests of Stendarr…” Haakig shook his head. “I’m as devout as the next man—I swear by the gods and say my battle-prayers—but that place stank of magic, and there was something in there they didn’t want us to see. Magic makes my skin crawl, and we’re likely to be seeing a lot more of it down there.” He nodded towards the sunken ruins, stone and snow lying in stark silence.

Rikke waited to make sure he was finished. She kept her eyes on the clouds, gauging time until the next snowfall covered the mess of tracks they’d made around Korvanjund. “I appreciate your candor, soldier. I don’t like magic either. I don’t like the idea that the distinction between priests and cultists is mostly a matter of convention. I don’t like that we live in a world where the dead rise to fight again. I don’t like being in enemy territory, and I don’t like the cold.” She looked him in the eye. “But I’m a legionnaire, and I’m here to do my job. And it doesn’t matter what I like or don’t like. What matters is what I can get done. And those _boys_ out there, present company included, are legionnaires too. Or so Captain Aldis tells me. And that means we can do great things, because it’s our _job_ to do great things. Now, tell me how Norri is doing with that door.”

“Ah,” Haakig started. “He’s… making progress. The rest of us are searching for more tools that might help. It’s a hell of a thing to take apart— but like you said, great things. Hopefully, by tomorrow morning…”

Haakig trailed off, his mouth hanging open, staring up and over Rikke’s shoulder. She whirled, sword flashing from its sheath in the same movement. It came in fast and low, with a rumble that they felt in their bones rather than their ears. The enormous form blocked out the sky and nearly skimmed the tops of the trees. The two legionnaires craned their heads and gaped at the underbelly of interlocking pale-brown scales. Leathery wings gave off a single powerful gust that rippled through the trees as the beast gained altitude. Its tail lashed back and forth in the air. And just as quickly, it was receding towards the eastern horizon.

“That— that’s a dragon,” the young man gasped. “A real, live dragon. What does it mean?”

Rikke sheathed her sword, staring after the dark speck. A cold fear settled into the pit of her stomach. “Take a good look around you, Haakig. This is what you’ll want to tell your grandchildren, when they ask where you were on the day dragons came back into the world.”

_If any of us survive their return._

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

It had taken him the rest of the next morning, but the man who’d earned his place on this expedition for his cleverness with mechanisms had indeed pulled off a great feat. The bronze circles had been pried out of the heavy stone door, the interlocking gears beneath them examined and manipulated, and he’d turned the wheels until the right pieces lined up. With a heavy grind of disused, recently-oiled parts, the door slid into the floor.

“Piece of cake,” Norri declared, wiping dust and grease from his hands. The rest of the Legion task force, minus Itard who was still sick, stood arrayed solemnly before the door, swords drawn and helms obscuring their faces. Norri quickly glanced over his shoulder into the tomb and skipped out of the way to grab his own gear.

Rikke stepped into a tunnel that no man had touched for some four thousand years. One passage was caved in, and she was well aware that any serious blockage would end their expedition. They simply didn’t have the equipment to excavate. But a door on the side passage was intact and opened easily into a large chamber. Her eyes followed the lines of enormous pillars, reaching to a ceiling several stories high. A grate let in cold blue light from the distant surface. Along the walls, sarcophagi stood sentinel in dark alcoves. Haakig started a circuit, pouring oil into the room’s braziers and setting them alight. The others spread out, looking for doors or levers, or anything that would open the grate blocking the next passage. Norri knelt and took measurements of the metal’s thickness, its composition. Three of the men went down a narrow side passage, and Rikke saw them emerge on an upper walkway.

A distant sound pulled at Rikke’s ears. Haakig was coming towards her, but she held up a hand. “Wait. Did you hear that?”

“It came from back towards camp. Itard?”

They listened in silence, counting heartbeats. But there was no other sound.

There are times when a commander must make decisions on very little information. “Thron, Solding. Come down and scout back the way we came. Your priority is to report back. If there’s anyone up there, do not engage. Brand, stay on the walkway with your bow. Alfhed, come here to my side of the door. Quiet now.”

Long minutes passed in silence, until Rikke thought that maybe they were jumping at ghosts. But she would not chide herself for being overly cautious with these men’s lives.

A shriek went up that made her blood run cold. “We’re under attack! Stormcloaks!” The call ended abruptly, leaving little to the imagination. A fast light patter of feet ran back towards their position and Solding emerged, wide-eyed. He darted to one side of the door and held his sword at the ready. One scout, at least, had kept his head. He held up fingers to signal to Rikke across the room. Four of them. Two heavy fighters and two light scouts with bows. She could hear them now. Steel boots on stone. That meant the scouts were very close.

She glanced around at the room. The lit braziers. The still-closed grate. Norri’s shield leaned up against the wall. Dammit. She shifted her stance to stand in front of the small engineer, raised her shield and crouched. On both sides of the door, her legionnaires did the same. _Stendarr,_ she prayed. _One day I go to Sovngarde, but let it be another day. Let the justice of our cause shield us from harm. Talos, give me strength—_

An arrow smashed against her shield. On the other side, the second scout shot true through the eyes of Olfeig’s helm. He was dead before he could scream. While the two Stormcloak archers hugged the walls of the passage for cover, their heavy fighters barreled through, turning one to a side. Rikke raised her shield against a sudden pounding onslaught and backed into the wall. On cue, Alfhed and Norri flanked the attacker. She pushed off the wall with a distracting charge, and she caught sight of the warrior on the other side of the room, smashing Haakig to his knees. A great hulk of a man who swung his sword in wide arcs, firelight shining on his long hair. A man who refused to wear a helm, whose face and blue cloak and sword-dance she would recognize anywhere, even after nineteen years.

Ulfric.


	3. The High King in his Jagged Crown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Galmar and Ulfric find more than they expected in the ruins of Korvanjund.

Chapter Three: The High King in his Jagged Crown

Ruins of Korvanjund, The Pale, 20th Last Seed, 4E 201.

It was just his luck to pick the side of the room with the heavily armored Legion commander. He’d take three-on-one with fresh-faced recruits any day, but this one was clearly a war veteran. Galmar pressed his advantage as the legionnaires looked over his shoulder and obviously realized who they were up against. But the young soldier on his right had some degree of focus, and met him blow-for-blow. Then he was forced to take a quick step back as the commander recovered from her hesitation. To his left, some kid in Imperial leathers, some kid who’d somehow forgotten his helm and shield, disengaged and maneuvered around towards Ulfric’s back. This was the part Galmar hated. The worry.

He twisted around to see if he could re-engage the kid, but the other two soldiers saw what was happening and flanked him with furious attacks. Instead of backing up into the line of the doorway, Galmar held his ground and gave as good as he got. This part he hated too. Trusting strangers to guard your back. But this was what archers were for. Not for firing into melee. For firing when they had a clean shot. Behind him, the would-be hero gargled and died. Galmar didn’t have to turn to imagine two arrows protruding from his thin chest. Still, it was always a bit harder, when they weren’t wearing helms.

The younger swordsman before him had decent form, but Galmar could quickly pick out the gaps in his timing. He had to whittle down the odds, and that meant taking down the easiest assailant first. He gave the commander a violent feint with his shield and then stepped quickly into close quarters with the youngster. Didn’t the legion teach these kids not to raise the elbow? He thrust in and up, and twisted aside, freeing his blade to counter the attack he knew would come from his left. It would anger her, to see her subordinate killed. And angry soldiers make mistakes.

Not this one. She came in low, under his shield, and swung at his leg hard enough to buckle it. Precise as in the practice yard. He fell against the wall and raised his shield, trying to force her to come around to finish him off, and expose her back to the doorway. 

Instead, she closed with him, shield-to-shield. Suddenly inspired, he mirrored her earlier action and pushed off against the wall. His blows smashed into heavy steel, denting and bruising but not cutting through. He was stronger, but she was better armored.

And damn, she had a fast blade. She thrust forward and raked through the laces of his bracer. Hot blood ran down his sword-arm. He gave ground again, another few steps to his right. Over her shoulder, he saw one of her men break running for the door, slashing wildly at Gretta and Engar. But once past them, he kept running. Not a suicide run against the archers, then, but desertion. Engar came up with his bowstring sliced, but drew two daggers. Galmar made eye contact with him over the legionnaire’s shoulder, then parried high just in time to avoid a blow to the head.

He followed her blade down as if he were turning the parry into a wide low sweep, but reversed to swing around in her high line with all his strength. Her shield was barely too slow, and he smashed into her helm before the edge of her shield caught his blade and nearly tore it from his grasp.

But this fight was over. Engar came up behind the commander as she pushed high, and drove two daggers into the unarmored chinks beneath her arms. Then he staggered back, an arrow protruding from his chest.

The legionnaire stumbled to her knees, her helm tumbling off to show a mess of blood and dark auburn hair. Galmar brought his sword down for the death-blow. She raised hers crosswise, flat against her gauntleted left hand. His steel rang against hers as her face tilted up and they both froze, locked in the embrace of their blades. His eyes traced the lines and crinkles of her face, the sorrows that more than twenty years had added, the beauty it had taken away. He searched her dark brown eyes, but what he searched for, he did not know. Guilt, maybe, or remorse.

Galmar shot a quick glance over his shoulder. Ulfric had charged up to the walkway to deal with the hidden archer.

“ _You!_ ” he breathed, withdrawing his sword.

Rikke’s blade clattered to the ground, the effort of holding it up clearly too much. She slumped to the side, and lay struggling for breath. Her brows knitted as she looked up at him. “…Galmar.” she gasped. “You’ve— grown a beard— and you look like hell.” Her mouth was thick with blood.

Galmar looked over his shoulder again. “Shhh. You’re dead,” he whispered, and put the helm back over her face. Her body lay unmoving.

Galmar straightened and turned to the doorway where Gretta was cutting the arrow out of Engar’s chest, blood flowing copiously as he struggled to swallow a potion without retching. Tears stood out in the wounded man’s eyes. Five legion bodies lay scattered on the floor. The bowman’s death-cry made six.

“There’s a lever up here,” Ulfric called from the walkway.

“Good, we need to get moving. Gretta, help him walk. He can drink all our potions while we go, for all I care.” Galmar clapped the scout gently on the shoulder. “Nice timing with those daggers.”

The grate slid into the ceiling. Ulfric came down and cast a critical eye over Galmar. “You’re bleeding, my friend. That commander looked like a tough one.”

“She was. You’re bleeding too, you know.” Ulfric had a scrape disappearing into his hair, and a nasty wound on his forearm. Galmar looked pointedly at the head wound, but was not about to have that discussion yet again. “Did you… block an arrow with your _arm_? And then pull it out? That’s what shields are _for_ , you know.”

Ulfric shrugged. “The shield was slowing me down.” At least he’d picked it up again. It was now slung over his back.

Galmar pulled the next set of doors closed behind them before pausing to hand some potions around. “Well, my King, we may be cranky and old, but we still have a hell of a lot of fight left in us.”

_All three of us._

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

It was an anticlimactic stroll to the main burial chamber, where the preserved remains of High King Borgas sat enthroned. Ulfric sheathed his sword and stood over the king out of legend, the last blood of Ysgramor. Tall dragon-teeth crowned the corpse’s head. Once, this man had ruled a vast empire from the Palace of the Kings, from the very same throne Ulfric now sat.

“All of the great dynasties are long gone,” he mused. “Ysgramor, the Remans, the Septims. Titus Mede’s blood is weak. ” He glanced back at Galmar. “I suppose it’s just about too late for me to found my own.” He reached out. “But I can make sure the storied history of this crown is not yet over.”

As Ulfric touched the crown, a pair of hateful eyes bloomed uncanny blue and the corpse surged to its feet, drawing up the greatsword it clutched in one hand to slash at the living king.

Galmar tugged his sword from its scabbard as he ran forward, his vision narrowing to the sight of Ulfric falling back, struggling with his own scabbard. The greatsword rose high over Ulfric’s head, crackling with ancient magic, and still Galmar was too far away to throw himself at the blade. All around the chamber, heavy lids of coffins clattered to the ground as the dead rose. The breath went out of him. For a moment, all sound went out of the room, focused and concentrated on a point between Ulfric and the draugr-king.

Ulfric _Shouted_ , and sound flooded back into the world with such force that the corpse was thrown backwards into his throne. Ulfric was on his feet then, sword in hand, and Galmar reached his side. Gretta stood in the center of the room, loosing arrows as fast as she could draw into the horde of undead that converged on them. Engar stood by her with twin daggers ready to defend her against the first monster to reach them.

“Your time is over!” Ulfric growled, his sword biting into dry, dead flesh.

Galmar flanked the draugr’s left. His blade hit bones as hard as steel. It was different, fighting the dead. They had no vital organs, they didn’t tire. And damn they were strong.

The dead king broke the distance between them, stepping back as its chest expanded with some simulacrum of breath. The two veterans braced themselves, but instead of a broad concussion of force, the draugr’s Voice was a stinging lash. The sound ripped Ulfric’s blade from his hands and threw it across the room. The corpse raised its greatsword for a mighty blow and charged.

Ulfric snatched from the air the sword that Galmar had already tossed. With a low, deep lunge, his tip reached the draugr’s chest before its swing bore down. The corpse impaled itself to the hilt, twitching for a few long seconds before the cold blue glow faded from its eyes.

Ulfric placed a boot on the chest of once-king Borgas of Winterhold and tugged the blade free, exchanging it for his own. Without further ceremony, he pried the crown from its dry, dusty skull. Placed on his own golden head, it gave him a foot of height and an air of satisfaction. Smaller teeth curved over his face in an outline of his cheekbones. “Finally. Now I can get back to my war.”

“Ysrarald owes me a drink,” Galmar drawled. “And you two,” he pointed at the scouts, and the ragged circle of lesser dead around them, “are definitely getting promotions.”

Gretta smiled wanly, taking off her helm and brushing sweaty strands of hair from her face. “Thank you, sir.”

Ulfric was already looking around the rest of the chamber. “Galmar, do your histories tell of High King Borgas wielding the power of the Voice?”

“I have not seen specific mention of it. But in those times, before Jurgen Windcaller, many men of Skyrim wielded Kyne’s gift, though not naturally as the dragon-born Septims would. As you do.”

“A power that transcends death, indeed. Galmar, if I should fall, do ensure that my remains guard something worth the taking. My thu’um will destroy would-be heroes until one emerges worthy enough to be my heir.”

“I will convey your wishes to Jorleif, or Wuunferth,” he said dryly, “for if you fall I will surely lie beside you.”

“Ah, there’s another passage back here.”

Galmar climbed the steps behind the throne and found that Ulfric had paused, staring into the shadows. Galmar peered at the dark back of the hall. “It’s a dragon-wall, Ulfric. I’ve seen one of these before. They’re inscribed with passages written in the ancient dragon tongue, but nobody has—”

Ulfric held up a hand. “Do you hear that?”

The room was silent.

He took a step forward. “It’s… a pounding. A rhythm. A pulse.” Slowly, his hands lowered to his side, and he took another step, his face lost in shadow. Another step. “It’s getting louder. Darker. I need—”

Galmar misliked this behavior. He stood directly in front of Ulfric, but his friend brushed him aside and continued towards the obsidian wall. In the darkness, his eyes had taken on a faint blue luminescence, a reflection from the wall, which now glowed with the same eerie hue. Licks of azure flame erupted and ran the outline of three carved symbols. Ulfric’s lips moved as he murmured the words of the script no living man knew. “ _Vegunthar… wahlaan qethsegol… bormahil vahrukt Hungunthar Tiid-Naak…_ ”

Galmar stood beside his king, sword in hand, ready to defend him. He stood by though he could not hear the things Ulfric heard, could not see the things he saw nor feel the things he felt. This magic, this dragon-blood, was not something he could defend Ulfric from. It was already inside him.

Ribbons of light, quite like those that had reached from the burning dragon carcass, wrapped themselves around Ulfric. His body shook with it.

The light glowed beneath his skin and faded away. They stood in the darkness, and Ulfric raised his hands to his face. “Galmar,” he whispered.

“I am here.”

“I cannot see.”

Galmar stepped close, so that Ulfric could sense the presence of him. “I am here. Let your eyes adjust. Take the time.” He hoped, desperately hoped, that this cruel magic had not taken Ulfric’s sight. That would have been too much. He recalled something that Wuunferth had said, once, when Galmar had asked him why he left the College of Winterhold. _Magic always asks a price,_ the old man had said. _And one day it asks too much._

“It’s receding,” Ulfric said at last. “The world returns.”

_The real trick to magic,_ the old man had added, _is realizing when that price is too high._

_Now that I think of it, that goes for all great power._

“Ulfric.” Galmar’s voice was rough. He pulled the man into a close embrace, as close as they could be with layers of armor between them. His hand slipped into Ulfric’s hair, onto the back of his neck. Ulfric pulled Galmar’s helm off, letting it clamor to the ground, and his fingers dug into his sandy-grey hair in return. They held each other, grasped each other.

“I want you,” Ulfric breathed into his ear, scraping his teeth along it as he withdrew.

Galmar’s mind raced with the day’s events. He forced his beating heart to slow. “I’ll be waiting for you,” he replied. “When you return from High Hrothgar. Take Gretta and Engar home while you still have the light today. I’ll burn the bodies, catch up with you. But don’t wait up for me— go see Arnegeir. The sooner you go, the sooner you can come back.”

Ulfric’s eyes were black in the shadows. “Almost as if you wanted to ruin my mood,” he muttered.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Galmar promised. “When you come back.” There was one more thing he had to do, and not much time.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

Galmar burned six bodies. Rikke, to his relief, was nowhere to be found. Neither was the young swordsman who had fought by her. He had apparently survived his torn gut— probably she had poured a thick red potion directly into his stomach through the wound. An old war trick. Messy as hell, but it worked.

He allowed his horse to walk at its own pace in the darkness of evening. He held in his hand the piece of parchment she had left behind. The piece of blank parchment. He read a thousand messages in its lack of words.

The guards at the gate looked at him skeptically, despite his attempts to clean up and his armor stripped of colors. “Ye’d better not be here to cause any trouble,” one warned him, before letting him into the city. He turned a sharp left up the steps to avoid the central market district, and picked his way through the quiet houses towards the grand staircase. The tree in the center of the city stood a stark skeleton against the bright full moons. He could have sworn it used to be a living tree.

Dragonsreach, lit warm and golden, was still one of the most impressive halls in Skyrim. Galmar’s senses were immediately seized by the mouth-watering aroma of roasting meats. He strode past the laden central table and resisted the urge to grab a leg of goat from a plate. A delicate situation, after all, required a bit of decorum.

A balding, well-groomed steward intercepted him with that innate instinct all stewards seemed to have. 

“Jarl Balgruuf expects me.”

“Ah yes,” the thin steward drawled. “He said that if an unwashed and possibly bloodied bearded man wearing a bear-skin cloak walked in, I was to conduct you to him at once. I had quite hoped he was joking. Right this way, if you please. The Jarl is dining in his quarters.”

He was lead upstairs, through a central map-room strewn with papers and assorted tools of war. Whiterun was preparing for battle. The steward rapped sharply on the Jarl’s door, then opened it to usher Galmar inside.

She’d washed, and changed into a simple dark green riding dress with her sword belted on. Her hair flowed freely, much shorter than it used to be. Balgruuf wore his gold and black, and his sword too graced his belt. They did not rise from the bountiful table. “Thank you, Proventus. You may leave. The three of us have a great deal to talk about.”


	4. Black Wings Unfurled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where were you on the day dragons returned to the world? An Imperial huntress from Falkreath was finding her place in the world. A Bosmer thief was dealing with unforeseen complications. A Dunmer with a mysterious past was betraying her ideals. Not for the last time, Whiterun was the center of the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long chapter, which I chose not to split up because of the relation between the scenes.

Chapter Four: Black Wings Unfurled

Whiterun, 19th Last Seed, 4E 201.

Jarl Balgruuf paused in his pacing and looked over the man and woman before him, the two people he trusted most in the world. In the past, the two had not seen eye to eye, but Balgruuf made deliberate effort to surround himself with dissenting opinions. And he was not known as a great conciliator for nothing. There was much in one’s life to value, to cultivate; strength and wisdom, wealth and influence. But Balgruuf counted steadfast companions most valuable of all, for they could see one’s flaws and balance them. And now, on the cusp of the greatest moment in all their lives, there was no one he would rather have by his side.

“You will both go,” he declared, “And so will I.”

To the man who he knew as a tireless warrior, who he’d trained with since they were first big enough to lift wooden swords, who he’d fought beside in the Great War, whose blunt counsel he’d valued in the decades since, to his little brother Hrongar he added, “Go alert the Companions, then join me at the gate. Ask Kodlak to lead the ground-defenses of the city.”

Hrongar smiled grimly. “Finally, some action.”

To the dunmer woman who’d saved his life on the field, guarded and advised him in the intrigues of Solitude, and become his most unlikely and faithful friend, to Irileth his housecarl he added, “Send runners for Sinmir and Lydia. I’ll need your help donning my armor.”

She was stoic as ever. “At once, my Jarl.”

He turned to the rest of his assembled councillors. The people he depended on to run this city. Every one of them was indispensable to him. “Caius, put your men on the walls with bows. They may well be our key asset— I expect this battle to be fought in the air. Proventus, you’re in charge of the civilian evacuation. Get them into Dragonsreach quickly and calmly. Farengar, help Danica and the other priests set up a field infirmary in the crypts, and stay down there.”

There was one more person here who’d listened to the frantic guard’s report. A wildcard, she stood apart, a little behind the court wizard, clad in battle-worn leather with her hood still shadowing her face. She had looked exhausted, when she’d heaved the heavy hunk of rock onto Farengar’s table. She’d likely been carrying it all night.

“Your retrieval of the dragonstone was truly a heroic feat. However, I must ask for your sword-arm once again. Farengar is no battle-mage, and he tells me you know as much about our foe as he.” She twitched in the wizard’s direction. Balgruuf ignored it. “No matter your… personal concerns, we need that knowledge in the field.”

She made no protest, just gave a simple nod. “It is my honor—and my solemn duty—to battle this dragon.”

His people, warriors and citizens alike, stood square-shouldered and proud in the war-room of Dragonsreach. This morning marked a turning point in their lives, the day dragons returned to the world. He knew they might not all survive this fight. “I want you all to know,” he started, “that Whiterun is blessed to have each of you guiding her, and so am I. Take care of yourselves today, but know also that we fight for something much greater than ourselves. We have brothers, men whom we hold in high esteem, marching across the country to fight for kings and queens, for gods and men, for memory of the past and for hope of the future. But while brother fights brother, today Whiterun fights our common foe. Today Whiterun remembers that once, dragons enslaved the races of men and mer. Today, we defend our city, and we defend Skyrim. We defend the Empire and all of Tamriel. Today we show that though we may be mortal, we will fight and die and go to Sovngard before we yield. For we are men and women of Whiterun.”

Their voices joined together in the glorious battle-cry. “For Whiterun!”

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

Brush fires raised pillars of dark stinging smoke. The western watchtower’s stones were cracked and discolored by heat, but the old ruin still stood defiant. Ria kept an arrow in hand and her eyes on the sky as she stationed herself to the east of the walkway. The Jarl’s heavily armed band spread out, their faces similarly tilted upwards. Jarl Balgruuf himself was met at the doorway by the lone remaining guardsman, clutching an injured arm.

Aela, sharp-eyed, turned her back to Ria and took watch over the other half of the sky. Skjor joined her, and they conversed in low voices. Ria ignored his glance in her direction, concentrated on the task at hand. But it was hard to ignore Vilkas and Athis needling each other about sword-sizes while Farkas absentmindedly chopped the tops off tall grasses. Arnbjorn approached a leathered, hooded woman who she didn’t recognize.

Njada wandered over to Ria, peering into the sky. “Boys. They can’t seem to take anything seriously except their cocks. I’m so glad we women have no need of such juvenile pissing contests.” She paused dramatically. “Oh _wait_ , I hear you have a _bet_ going on with _Aela_ , don’t you?”

Ria did not dignify this with a response.

“What’s the prize? You get a night with her man?”

“Shut up and watch for the dragon.”

The nord woman’s voice was low and hard. “Look here, Imperial. You think you’re hot stuff, but let me tell you something. You’re in the Companions now, and you don’t get points for the things you did before showing up. We don’t care if you think you’re the best hunter in Falkreath. We don’t care whether you’ve killed spriggans or gotten fucked up the ass by them. Aela’s been here a long time, she’s earned respect and trust and she’s joined the fucking Circle. You pick a fight with her, you pick a fight with all of us. And that ent a good way to get on anybody’s good side. So back the fuck off.”

Ria narrowed her eyes against the sun and kept her voice even. “I’m not here to make friends,” she said. “I’m here to fight. I thought that was what the Companions were all about. Maybe I was wrong.”

“You don’t know the first thing about the Companions,” she spat. “But suit yourself. A lone wolf is a dead wolf, and then we’ll all be the happier.” She pointed straight up. “There’s your dragon, bitch-face.”

It dropped from the sky like a hunting hawk, wings arcing nearly vertical and four taloned limbs reaching for the ground. Ria sighted and loosed, her blue-fletched arrow the first in the sky, but followed quickly by a volley of others. She drew her second even as she followed the first arrow’s arc and saw it bounce harmlessly from the beast’s pale clay belly-scales.

A sharp crackling lashed through the air as the dragon fell closer. A crackling that was both sound and smell, that was a faint sensation on the skin. The dark-elf housecarl had a sword in her right hand, but it was her left which extended towards the beast, spitting white-violet defiance. The lightning, too, broke on the hard scales, but sent little sparks and arcs across its surface. At the focal point, those scales were starting to darken by the time the housecarl dropped her hand and ran forward to meet the monster if it landed. The fighters, Jarl’s men and Companions alike, followed her lead.

With a great beat of its wings accompanied by piercing screams, the dragon pulled up from its dive with the injured guardsman clutched in its claws. A ragged circle of defenders was left staring upwards helplessly. Wind battered Ria with a strong earthy stench. Funny, that. She’d never imagined that dragons would smell like earth.

Regaining the skies, the dragon flung the unlucky guard aside. A tumbling speck against the blue. Now that, that was a marksman’s challenge. A moment later, he’d hit the side of the tower and dropped to the ground. If he hadn’t been dead the moment the dragon-claws had skewered him, he certainly was now.

Some of the Jarl’s warriors were still shooting even as the dragon circled away for another pass. Sword-swinging idiots. They had no sense of the range on their longbows. She and Aela held at half-draw as the dragon dove again, this time head-first.

“It’s getting ready to Shout!” That was the stranger calling out. And how was she supposed to know? Maybe it was going to snap someone up in its jaws.

She missed the eye, but not by much. Her arrow embedded itself in the softer flesh of its jaw. Aela’s red-fletched arrow pierced its nostril. The ugly maw opened, and it took little finesse for two more arrows to find its gullet.

The others were yelling and scattering. Ria lined up her next arrow. It was a good angle, a good angle to drive up through the roof of its mouth and into the brain. The dragon’s teeth, she could see at this distance, were as long and wide as her whole hand. Its nostrils flared wide as it sucked in air, prickling cold all up and down her bare arms. As the dragon took its breath, she let hers out, centered herself for the perfect shot. Ready to release in the moment stillness and emptiness, in the moment when the world aligned between her eye, her hand, the arrow, and her prey. The moment when she could not miss.

Impact bowled her over, making her arrow fly wide. Instinct made her tuck her bow close to her chest, tuck and roll. She was pressed to the ground, a roaring inferno all above and around her. Blistering heat rolled over her in waves, along with a smell like curing leather. The smell of a blacksmith’s forge.

The pressure on her back let up suddenly. Someone had hit her, tackled her to the ground, shielded her from the dragon’s fiery breath. _Aela_. Despite the hazing she’d dished out for weeks, Aela had dived in front of a Shouting dragon in order to save the newest Companion from the flames. Ria turned to her with unexpected gratitude on her lips.

“Damn kids.” The stranger’s leather hood had fallen back, and she was a narrow-eyed middle-aged blonde woman whose mouth seemed set in a permanent frown. There were deep circles under her eyes. “You’re more useful as a live sharpshooter than as yet another dead hero.”

Ria was found that she was suddenly livid. “I had the shot! _Fuck you,_ I was about to kill that thing. _I had the shot._ ”

The woman wasn’t even looking at her anymore, her eyes tracking the form circling back around.

“This is on your head,” Ria spat, scrabbling to her feet and checking that her bow was undamaged. “That dragon would be dead, if it weren’t for you.”

The other woman nocked an arrow loosely, eyes on the sky. “Dragons have an extended hard palate. That’s a thick bone across the roof of the mouth. Protects the nasal passages from, say, great gouts of fire. Eating armored men whole. Also, arrows.”

An embarrassed anger fought with curiosity. This woman knew the anatomy of dragons the way Ria knew the anatomy of deer and bears. _Know your prey._

But she was walking away without another word. Something about the woman’s demeanor had changed. She raised her voice and started issuing orders as the dragon came back around. “Ground fighters,” she looked at the rest of the Companions, “spread out! Don’t clump up where it can get you all at once. When we land it, some of you will be the lucky bastards who are closest. Go for the flank. Head and tail are both deadly. Archers,” she looked over the Jarl’s people and spared a particularly pointed look for Ria and Aela. “Stop fucking around and shoot for the wings. I want to see big tearing holes. Look lively now!”

It was another flaming strike. The fighters scattered, and the dragon chased them with an arcing spray that set the grassy field aflame but caught none in an extended blast. Those touched by it dropped and rolled, the lightly armored faring better and soon regaining their feet. The one woman wearing heavy steel was the first of the metal-buckets to stop flopping around, and she ran to help the Jarl up. As the dragon unfurled its wings at the end of the dive, it was the archers’ turn. All at once, a volley peppered the tough leather wings.

It was a better tactic, and the dragon responded in kind. Instead of regaining the sky, it folded its wings protectively and dropped back onto the ground with an impact that sent them all staggering. And in that moment of hesitation, its legs started pumping, charging towards the causeway faster than Ria had ever imagined such a bulk could move, swaying its head to keep arrows from finding their marks.

Swords converged on its flanks. Swords and waraxes, and even Athis dancing in with his sharp little blades. The dragon twisted from side to side, snapping at the gnats that were always just out of reach. It roared in unmistakeable frustration and spread its wings once again, allowing well-placed upper cuts to tear into them.

The dragon leapt into the air, and clearly its injuries were not enough to keep it from hovering, surveying them all with a keen, malicious intelligence. Two volleys hit it while it inhaled. But on the exhale, blazing pain washed over the archery posts.

 _Roll, roll._ Ria rolled to a stop. She didn’t seem to be on fire anymore, though her whole body ached dully. Minor burns, maybe, but wide-spread. And for the second time today, she was on her ass in the dirt.

A large form blocked out the sun, hand reaching down. Briefly, she wished she could see who it was before accepting the weakness of aid. Hell, she’d rather just get up herself. But taking stock of the painful trembling in her legs, she also did not want to fall right back down. She took the hand up, immediately scanning the sky for a dragon that was no longer there. Immediately checking that her bow lay where she had thrown it to the ground. All over the field, people were uncorking potions and straggling back towards the Jarl. “We drove it off?”

Arnbjorn, white-haired despite his ageless face, just shrugged at her with his eyes. Here was one man, at least, who’d stayed aloof from the hazing of the newest recruit; who stayed aloof from most everything. One man who hadn’t given her an unkind word; a man of few words. As she gave simple thanks, still caught in the shock of flames and burns, she realized just how far she was from making a single friend in the weeks since she’d arrived in Whiterun. There’d been the beginnings of friendship, the barmaid at the Bannered Mare. But then Saadia had asked something of her that she couldn’t possibly do. The Companions had a strict rule against getting involved in politics. And Saadia’s desperate request had been as political as they come.

For a warrior-order who claimed to be above politics, they sure had a lot of it within the walls of the hall. And Arnbjorn, as far as she knew, stayed out of it all. That was refreshing.

“Thanks,” she said again, meaning it.

“Sure,” he shrugged. As he let go of her hand, something caught his eye and made him pause. “Nice ring,” was his only comment.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

People pushed and crowded into the Dragonsreach hall under the direction of a stern steward. The wood-elf’s quick green eyes took in towering wood and stone architecture in one broad sweep, and set about scanning the sea of people. Mallus wasn’t here. No doubt he and the other meadery workers were taking refuge in the cellars, safe enough from dragon-fire. But feigning over-caution, the wood-elf had followed the call for evacuation and now he pressed into the opportunity that chaos and uneasiness offered. The best time to learn about people was when they were vulnerable. The best time to slip off into secure areas was in a crisis. He was the only one who noted the shapely dark-haired woman in a simple blue dress who padded up the stairs. This part was her show to run. He was just the backup.

It was a hall full of the young and the old, the weak and the infirm, the breton and redguard merchant class who had not been raised in nord warrior culture. Three old women gathered up the children underfoot into a story-circle, while a few young mothers hovered. Two priests, presumably the ones who were not also trained in the healing arts, held court on opposite sides of the hall. Heimskr, a controversial figure and the man regularly preaching from the city’s central square, had attracted a small knot of the Grey-Mane clan as he sang the praise of Talos, god of man. Their feud-enemies, those Battle-Born women who were not on the walls, were helping the priest of Arkay to set up a makeshift altar to the god of life and death. But in all the hall, there was only one other elf. A dunmer girl who sat on the far side of the steps, her knees drawn up to her chest under a ragged skirt. He noted who she was watching, of the pair of dark-skinned women. His curiosity was piqued.

An ancient woman with a cap hiding her baldness brushed past his shoulder and looked up at him with watery eyes. “Beautiful boy,” she smiled toothlessly, reaching to touch his shoulder-length white-blonde hair. “Maybe some other day I’ll reveal you destiny, hmm?”

He took her hand, kindly. “Thank you, grandma. But I’ve a pretty good idea what lies in my future.”

She turned his hand over in her own, traced a triangle in the lines of his palm, and cackled. “Oh-ho, I don’t think so! Hidden, you are. Touched. I’m not sure I could read you after all!” She winked. “But come back to me when I’ve had my rest, and this old woman will give her best try.” She dropped his hand and wandered away, muttering to herself. “Tea leaves, palm reading, crystal scrying… Oooh! Maybe trepanning?”

As he made his way through the crowd he was buffeted with snippets of conversation, of speculation and rumor. “A dragon,” they said, over and over. “A real dragon.” “I hear Helgen Keep was destroyed by the dragon. Army and all!” “The College was snooping around the ruins of the First City. Mages in a burial crypt. I’ll bet anything they woke the beast up.” “No, no. It’s the elves. The Dominion, softening us up for a second Great War. They mean to wipe us all out.” “It’s the dark elves, not the Altmer. They’ve got a dragon in that mountain of theirs. Now they’ve come to take our land.” “I don’t care how dangerous it is, I really want to see one. You know, there was once a dragon in this very city, trapped by King Olaf…”

He reached the dunmer girl. “Mind if I sit down?”

She glanced up at him with dark red eyes set in a thin grey face that might be called pretty in a plain sort of way. She just shrugged. When he sat, she shifted herself slightly away. “My name’s Enritt. It’s a hell of a time to be visiting Whiterun.”

“How do you know I’m visiting?”

He shrugged. “There are not a lot of us elves this far in. I moved here a few weeks ago— I’m trying to learn the brewer’s trade, and there’s no better place. I haven’t seen you around.” He smiled. “I’d have noticed.”

She ignored this last. “I’m a farm-hand. Maybe I’ve just moved here too.”

He gave her an easy smile. “May-be.” But his eyes had already checked her over. Secluded, by choice. Not mingling with would-be new neighbors. Wary of strangers. Worn but ill-fitting shoes and clothes. Face thin and closed; malnourished. Uncalloused hands. Head recently shaved. She looked young to be away from home. This one had a story. A runaway initiate, he’d guess. But she did not watch the crowd for fear of discovery. There was something predatory about the way her eyes followed certain people. That was it. She was _wary_ , but not afraid. She was careful and guarded, but there was something she wanted.

He plied her with a sigh, turned to survey the room companionably. “Somehow I don’t think I’m so lucky.”

He let the silence grow comfortable as they sat and watched the Nords, Imperials, and the few Redguards. When she finally spoke, she was still lost in her own thoughts. “How many of them, do you think, really care about each other, about other people?”

His gaze flickered over the pageant before them, over the priest whose voice rose and fell in ecstasy, blind to whether anyone listened, over the priest who stumbled along leading a low prayer and looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. Over the redguard couple whose argument had erupted into full-blown yelling, the children fidgeting under the watchful eyes of their keepers, the knot of merchants trading biting remarks over the raising of prices in wartime.

“That man there,” he pointed with his chin, “is a beggar on the streets. But it’s cold in Whiterun at night. He does not sleep outside. Where does he sleep? Each night, someone puts a roof over his head. It’s these people who do it, and maybe the inn or the guardhouse. And he is hale and healthy. In harvest and in winter, in wartime and in peace, someone gives him vegetables. Someone gives him stew. Someone even buys him mead. People come in all sorts, but most of them have a community, a circle of those they care about. To strangers, they may give kindness or harshness. But to brothers and sisters, to neighbors, even their most cruel words come from a core of caring.”

She swallowed. “Some people give their lives for strangers. And some people hurt those in their care most of all. When is it ever just to hurt another for one’s own gain?”

Curiosity tickled at him with renewed strength. “An odd question to ask, of someone you just met. I think often about justice, you know.”

She shrugged. “Why not trust a stranger more than a friend? Strangers pass each other by and do not come back.”

“Well,” he smiled easily, “More than ever I hope this is not the last I see of you. Here’s what I think. It is never just to harm another for one’s own gain. Justice is the equality between people. A bite of bread in another’s mouth is just the same, to the blind eyes of justice, as a bite of bread in yours. But,” he forestalled her objection, “it is just to harm another for the gain of many. For the gain of your community. We lock up or kill those who would harm us and those we love, and that is just.”

“We lock up or kill the innocent, if it would advance the ends of the many guilty,” she said bitterly. “Can that be just?”

“No.”

“But we do it anyway. And sometimes we do it even out of that vaunted love of brothers.” There was real misery in her voice, and he had not unraveled the mystery of which side of that misery she was on. Probably both.

“Some people walk through life and the biggest decisions they make are how high to set the price of produce, or how to punish their child, or whether to sleep with the neighbor. But some people have much greater choices to make, and much further to fall from goodness.”

She looked at him then, with narrowed eyes. “An odd thing to say, to someone you just met, Enritt the brewer’s assistant.”

“Some things are worth a bit of risk to say. How does one keep to the right choices? All people, high and low, quiet and adventuresome, should be asking this question. But for those who might find themselves more often than not in some crisis or other, it is all the more pressing.” He leaned in conspiratorially, enough to brush at the boundary of her space, not enough to look like he was going to touch her. “And I know the answer. It’s a matter of drawing the lines. Drawing lines that you will never, ever cross. All people have a need for rules, a code of honor whether or not that is the same code as the Jarl’s law, or the gods’ law, or the bandits’ law. Because in moments of hardship, we are no good at all at seeing the good from the bad. In moments of hardship, keep to your personal code, and only in moments of the greatest peace and calm think on whether a rule should be changed. That is how to walk the hard mountain-paths of this world without falling. You see, there’s something to all this nord talk of honor.”

She sat in silence, thinking it over until he wondered whether she would respond at all. “The hard part, it seems, is deciding where to draw those lines in the first place,” she said finally.

“You already have the right instincts. Harm done must be balanced by good to others. Aid and defend your family. Some laws of the land are to be followed, and others are artifacts of inequality and exploitation. Do no harm to an innocent person. Never kill, even indirectly, except in immediate defense.”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “The right instincts.” Then, working to control the sudden catch in her voice, “If you don’t mind, I’d really like to be left alone now.”

He did not envy her this anguish. Respecting her wishes he stood, fishing in the pocket of his tunic. “Just one more thing. You might think that, on the whole, it’s safer not to reach out to others. But I’ve found I’d never get anything done if I didn’t extend a little trust.” He handed her a carved wooden coin. “Here. You look like you need this more than I do. If you’re ever in Riften and need help, look up my cousin. Etienne. Wandering souls need to help each other out sometimes.”

She took the coin, ran her fingers over it. When she looked up at him, her eyes were puffy but her voice steady. “Riften? Do you know…” she visibly struggled with the risks and rewards of trust. “Do you know a Bosmer called Enthir? He’s… he might’ve been in Riften some years ago.”

“I’m afraid I’m not very good at names,” he said. “There are just so many different ones. But you know us Bosmer. We’re all connected, one way or another.”

She fished in her own pockets for parchment and coal. “I’m not going that way. But if you could send along a message, it might reach him before I do. Please.”

“Of course.”

She pondered for a moment, and did not bother to hide what she wrote. She had no sealing-wax, and besides, she must know that no message she wrote would stay private. In the end, she just wrote five words, unsigned.

_They’re lying. I didn’t die._

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

A healing potion, a declaration of qualified victory from the Jarl, and the walk back to Whiterun had all gone a long way towards making Ria feel better. She still wanted a wash and a strong cup of mead.

As the sortie returned to the deserted streets and she caught sight of a lone turban-hooded man picking his way down from the Wind District, she decided she might settle for another fight instead. “What are _you_ doing skulking around the empty city?” she spat. “A thief as well as a bully?”

“I beg your pardon,” the goateed redguard said, starting to move around her.

Ria’s blood was up. “Not so fast. I’ve got something to say to you. You’re making trouble for someone in this city, someone who’s— my friend. You’ve all been banned, on the guard’s orders. One of your people is already in jail. I hear we’re all full on cells, so maybe I’ll just shoot you instead.” She took an arrow from her quiver, glancing around at the tired fighters ignoring the confrontation as they trickled up towards the Mare or their homes. “I’m sure no one would mind. Gate’s right there. You’d better start running faster than my arrow.” She nocked, and drew, but the man did not give her the satisfaction of squirming.

He walked slowly and deliberately to the gate, betraying nothing of how the skin between his shoulder blades prickled. Few people have it in them to kill suddenly, mercilessly, unnecessarily. This he knew better than most. But this dark-haired Imperial woman with paint around her amber eyes looked like she might just be one of them.

For her part, Ria watched the foreigner walk through the open gate. “I’ll remember you,” she called after him. “And if I ever see you around here again, I’ll kill you.” That wasn’t politics. That was law-enforcement. That she could do.

She also noticed, in retrospect, that all the other Alik’r wore head-wraps of blue-grey. She’d never seen a red one before.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

Etienne Rarnis knew he had a very short timetable after Commander Caius passed through the Dragonsreach dungeon on his evening rounds.

Tonight was his last night as a brewer’s assistant. A brewer’s assistant walked through a Jarl’s hall with some spring of purpose in his steps, the authority vested in him by his prominent employer. A brewer’s assistant had the slightest hesitation in his step, a deference to the authority of court and guard. A brewer’s assistant carried his cloth-covered bucket as if it were the most precious cargo in the world.

The lone, bored dungeon guard straightened as Etienne came down the stairs. “Excuse me, sir. Your Commander has gone to join the celebrations and to drink with my master, but the two of them have sent me here with a token of appreciation for you, for your ill luck in drawing duty tonight.” He unveiled the trio of bottles nestled in the bucket, bunching the cloth in his left hand. “For _after_ your shift, of course,” he winked.

The man, fresh-faced and perhaps in his early thirties, took the bucket with gratitude. He bent to place it on the ground behind his post, and came up to a thrumming green chord in the air, a spreading sense of well-being. His evening, though it had started poorly, had been vastly improved by the kindness of this stranger.

Etienne lowered his right hand, the afterglow fading from his skin. “Ah, my friend,” he added, with a practiced even inflection. “Here, turn around for a moment. I’ll fix your collar for you.”

The dungeon guard smiled vaguely. “Oh, thanks.”

Etienne shifted the yellow tabard and the chain shirt down the man’s shoulder. His left hand came around tenderly and pressed the doused cloth into his mouth. The other slipped a thin alchemy-slicked dagger into the large muscle to the side of his spine. He held both in place for a few long moments while the man spasmed and stilled against him. “Easy,” he murmured. “Sleep easy. Not much you can do against a poisoned dagger in the back. You’ll be all right.”

He eased the unconscious guard down into a comfortable position, leaving the dagger in place to stem the trickle of blood. Collecting his bucket, he strode into the wide row of cells and to his objective.

“Nice bag of tricks,” the jester said, not bothering to hush a high nasal voice. “But you’re not very quiet. I’d have flunked you on that job.”

Etienne twirled a lockpick between his fingers. “Lucky for both of us, I don’t work for you. Now show me the sign again.”

“Can never be too careful, can you?” At his side, the jester’s fingers did an intricate little dance. _Ally in need of assistance._

“Have some name I can call you by?” Etienne gave the appropriate counter-sign of acknowledgement, and set to work on the lock.

“You may call me… Cicero.”

“Etienne.”

In their own cells, the other three prisoners were stirring. A boisterous nord, a somber redguard, and the half-naked and fully insane breton alchemist that Etienne had helped escort here yesterday. Landing him in this mess of a jailbreak in the first place.

“Hey, what about me?” The nord was dressed in finery, but his face was worn rough. “Let me out too, boy. I have friends in powerful places, I can reward you. Why, Olfrid Battle-Born himself…”

Etienne concentrated on his task and answered without bothering to turn around. “Olfrid Battle-Born has interceded on your behalf. You’ll be in here for a few days, for drunkenness. The rest is taken care of.”

“Oh, come on, boy. I have better things to do than sit in a cell. You’re here already, for the _crazy one_. I’ll make it worth your while.”

The lock clicked open. Etienne went to stand before the nord’s cell. “Sorry,” he said to his face. “I don’t deal with _your kind_.”

Red blotchy anger spread across his face. “You think you can get away with talking about Nords that way, elf?”

“I mean _murderers_.”

Behind him, the jester gave a high-pitched snort of laughter.

Etienne turned to see him leaning nonchalantly on the outside of his cell. “Wiser men than I say that the _accord_ is to be kept. So I’ll keep it. But I won’t like it. You stand for everything we reject. And that’s why,” he addressed the ragged alchemist, “I didn’t kill _you_.”

Etienne picked up the bottles of mead, and the thin-haired old man followed his hands with sunken eyes. “They put me back in the very same cell, did you know that?” he rasped. “Ten years, ten years I was here. Death is better. Kill me. Please kill me instead.”

“I had a hell of a bad day because of you, and more skeever bites than I care to count. An easy job turned into a hellish nightmare because of your sick experiments. You’re mad, and a menace to society.” His eyes flickered back to the jester. “If anyone deserves to be executed, it’s you. And I expect the Jarl will give you that option. But justice, and your fate, are in his hands. Not the hands of an individual, but the hands of the law, of a system to which we are all accountable in the end.” He considered the bottles in his hands. “Death is an ugly kind of justice, with little poetry in it. I brought you a gift.” He passed the bottles through the bars, and the old man snatched them eagerly. “Your own special blend, skeever-mead. It won’t kill you. It will make you miserably sick. But I think,” and all the confirmation he needed was right there on the madman’s face, “that you’re going to drink it anyway, because for a little while, before you get sick, it will make you feel good again.”

The disused sewer grate, appropriately shadowmarked, was right where Sapphire had said it would be. “Come on, Cicero, it’s time to go.” The redguard prisoner’s hooded eyes watched him. “Sorry, this party is invitation-only.”

“No problem,” he muttered. “I’m safer in here anyway. Failure is death. He’ll probably send that damned Crown assassin after me.”

The jester had straightened up and was looking over the three prisoners with an odd gleam in his eye. “Go on ahead,” he crooned. “I’ll catch up shortly.”

Etienne place himself squarely between the jester and the three cells. “Come along,” he said firmly.

“ _So_ much concern over who deserves to die and who does not. But a murderer, a murderer deserves to die. A mad poisoner, he deserves to die too! He asked so nicely! And,” he eyed the third cell, “an assassin’s target deserves to die. But it doesn’t matter what we _deserve_ , really. What matters is what we _get_.”

“I’m starting to think you deserve to be put back in that cell. Accords or no accords.”

With a single fluid motion, Cicero fell forward, slipped his fingers along Etienne’s pant-leg, and came up with his boot-knife in hand. “I’d like to see you try, oh yes. I’d like to see you try.”

Etienne had put another step of distance between them, both hands arched and pulsating pale green. The air was thick with the anticipation of release. The itch of it crawled up his arms.

“Tricks and tricks,” Circero murmured. “But if your first trick doesn’t work, what then, what then? You’ll be dead, then. If your first trick doesn’t work, you’ll be dead. And how will you know if it worked? On a master of disguise, a master of roles… what if I go all gooey-eyed, like this…” Tension melted away from the jester’s body, his hands dropping to his sides. A vague, empty smile dawned on his face. His voice was suddenly empty of the mania. “Why hello, my friend.” 

Beads of sweat gathered at the back of Etienne’s neck and slid down his back. He held steady.

Cicero morphed again, stepping into striking distance in a fighter’s crouch. Etienne spooked, arms coming up to defend himself, and green power crackled between them as the spell flew wide. Cicero pressed the dagger to his throat, leaned in. “Gotcha,” he breathed into Etienne’s ear. “Now run along. The grown-ups need to talk.”

Cicero shoved him away in the direction of the grate, and Etienne responded with double fists of red slammed into the jester’s body. For a moment, the magic arced between them, drawing on the illusionist’s pounding heart, the lingering sensation of steel at his throat, his growing awareness of time ticking down before the guards came in with the brewer. Just as suddenly, the connection between them broke with a hollow concussion of sound.

Cicero stepped back, his eyes gone wide and haunted, the dagger clutched in an unsteady hand. His breath came ragged. “The little elf is fast, yes he is. He thinks he can scare us, but he doesn’t know. No, he doesn’t know the things Cicero has seen! He doesn’t know that there is only one fear left, the fear of—” the little man let out an inhuman screech. “ _Where is she?!_ Where is my mother? What have they done with her!”

Etienne charged up his hands once again, despite the faint dizziness at the edge of his vision. “The coffin is safe,” he said in his most reasonable tones. “We found it. I am taking you to it right now.” He nodded toward the grate, his eyes never leaving the madman. “Let’s go. Quickly and quietly.”

Cicero stood down, straightened, and offered up the dagger hilt-first. His eyes were hooded, his face expressionless. “Fooled you again, didn’t I?” His laughter was hollow. “Get it?”

Etienne motioned for him to go first.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

The two of them met behind the smithy in the dark part of the evening, before the moons rose.

“I did what you said,” the dunmer girl whispered. “All the supplies are packed on the horse. She’s hidden ‘round the side of the walls.”

Saadia wrapped her up in a brief hug, which she endured stiffly. “You’re such a dear. Thank you so much. You have no idea how long I’ve waited for someone like you to come along and help me when no one else would. Loreius’ harvest farm-hand proves herself more kind than even the honorable Companions.”

“You’ll really take me with you?”

They both pulled up their hoods to hide their distinctive colorings. A redguard and a dunmer, plotting in the night. The start to many a nord’s conspiracy theories. “Anywhere you like. It’ll be nice to have the company.”

Saadia had said they would have no trouble with the guard, and sure enough, Whiterun’s gates opened smoothly and silently to admit them into the night.

“Why don’t we go north, to Winterhold? The Alik’r don’t like the cold, maybe they won’t follow you there.”

Her grimace was evident even in her whispered voice. “I don’t like the cold either.”

“Well, I guess we can part somewhere along the way—”

“But if you’re going that way, we can go that way. I suppose I could head into Morrowind from up north. Is it nice there?”

“I don’t remember. I was too young,” she said noncommittally.

They crossed the short drawbridge and turned onto the narrow road down the hill. Saadia nodded at the manned towers. “They didn’t used to have so many postings, you know. Rumor is the war’s coming to Whiterun.” Her companion looked nervous, despite the fact that the guard presence was probably the one thing preventing the Alik’r from lying in wait outside the city.

“I hear there’s really only one reason people go to Winterhold. Are you looking to join the College?”

“No,” the girl said, too quickly. “Not that.”

Saadia felt the stirrings of long-disused court instincts, instincts that knew the smell of lies and secrets. The smell of a girl’s fear.

“Elyn, it’s all right. You’re helping me, a stranger, when no-one else will. Supplies and a horse to ride are well and good, but they do not repay the fact that you may be saving my life. I’m not going to ask questions you don’t want to answer.” She stopped, put her hands on the girl’s shoulders, felt her flinch at the touch. Elyn was short for a dunmer, putting them on a level height. “But this has to be clear between us: if we are going into trouble, _I need to know_. All right?”

The girl couldn’t meet her eyes. “Yeah,” she mumbled. “We’ll split up before Winterhold. Winterhold is trouble.” She stepped away, indicating a slide of rocks that would get them off the road and circling back towards the walls. “Come on, around this way.”

The shadow of the city walls put them out of sight of the faint spillover of light from the watchtowers. Her senses now on high alert, Saadia picked out the familiar sound of a horse’s breathing. She unwrapped the small torch from the folds of her skirt, picked the strike-chips from their place at its base. “Here, hold this while I strike the light.”

The chips sparked on the second try, and the oil-treated cloth of the torch caught aflame. Saadia’s exotic features were thrown into relief. So was the hand, dark as her own, that wrapped around and pressed a cloth to her face. The other arm was around her waist, holding her close to a strong body in the shadows, lifting her kicking feet from the ground until her struggles slowed and she fell limp.

“I want my fee,” demanded the dunmer girl. Her skin crawled.

He tossed something, with a flick of his wrist, but it wasn’t a bag of money. The dagger lodged itself in her belly. She remembered just in time not to pull it out. Her hands clutched at it, feeling around the edges to see how much she was bleeding even as a numb weakness spread to her knees and chest. The torch was sputtering on the ground, not far from her face. That meant she had fallen already, and not felt a thing. She craned up at the looming shadow.

“I’m not a merchant,” he said soft and low.

“No, please—” She struggled to keep her words from slurring. This couldn’t be happening, not when she still had so much to do. “I have to get back. Someone has to warn them. Tell Mirabelle Ervine… the Orb is not their biggest problem… there’s a conspiracy…”

The torch faded in and out of her sight, and blindness won over. The only thing left to her was the urgency of the pulse in her neck, and even that was skipping and faltering. A hundred regrets flashed through her mind. After all the horror she’d been through, this was how it was going to end. If only she had said more—

“And I’m not a messenger,” was the last thing she heard. “I’m an assassin.”

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

It was a bright night of merriment and celebration. The fey ecstasy of being alive for another day to come. Kodlak had thrown open the doors of Jorvaskarr, declaring that on this night, on the night Whiterun drove a dragon from her walls, every man and woman shared in the glory of Ysgramor. Sabjorn had Honningbrew mead brought up by the cartload, with the bill to be split between the treasuries of Dragonsreach and Jorvaskarr. The main event, the unveiling of his newest batch for the scrutiny of his greatest patron, was to unfold as soon as Commander Caius returned from the duty-rounds he insisted on making.

In the meanwhile, Ria was drunk. Not the kind of drunk that meant slouching over a cup. Not the kind of drunk that meant fury and fists. The kind of drunk that meant the whole hall glowed warm and bright, conversation flowed without hindrance, the past lay lifetimes away, and these people around her— these people were the _Companions_ , the most glorious and interesting and beautiful people in the world. And she was one of them.

Torvar laughed uproariously at Farkas’ deadpan remark. Athis returned, dragging a small end-table, and announced to the room at large that there would be a heavy bag of septims for anyone who could defeat him in a Sadrasian knife-game. A small bag of septims for anyone who would _play_ him in a Sadrasian knife-game. Ria’s eyes kept drifting across the room, to the way Aela was telling some animated tale, to the line of fair skin beneath her arm to her waist.

A commotion indicated that the commander of the guard had made his appearance. The brewer made a show of sitting him down, of tapping the first cask, filling a crystal tasting goblet, holding it to the light and describing his art to his audience using words like _tasting notes_ and _moveable combs_ and _business model_. There were politics behind this moment, Ria had heard. Politics that involved the economies of two Holds, a great deal of money, and some very powerful people. But she also knew that the people of Whiterun, like her, were not crowding around to hear about beekeeping, brewing, or promotional offers. They were here to drink some delicious fucking mead.

Ria found herself pressed between Torvar and some old crone, the owner of the stables. She craned to get a good look at the commander’s face as he studied the clarity and aroma of the mead, as he brought the goblet delicately to his lips, took a large mouthful to swirl thoroughly.

Mead spewed across the table. Caius looked up at Sabjorn with a cross between anger and sheer incomprehension. “This tastes like _filth!_ ” He stood, his face now a livid red. “From the taste, I’d say the rumors are true. How dare you serve us this skeever-infested swill?”

The brewer’s instinct was to reach out for the goblet in helpless disbelief.

Caius grabbed the man’s bald skull and tipped his head back, pouring the contents of the goblet down his throat while he choked and sputtered. The warriors and citizens of Whiterun looked on in appreciation. A few started up a chant of encouragement. This was better entertainment even than a knife-game.

“That’s right, drink it, drink it all. I’ll put you in irons for the rest of your days! If you’re lucky, you’ll die of your own poison!”

The retching, blubbering brewer was hauled off to the dungeons. The hall re-erupted with eager voices. The old woman, Lilith Maiden-Loom, turned away with a raised eyebrow and a knowing shake of her head. “There goes a man who doesn’t know his place in the world,” she croaked to no one in particular. “My friend Maven and I, we know our place in the world. Know the place of others, too.”

Ten barrels of Jorvaskarr’s own reserves were tapped to replace the Honningbrew, and the revelry continued seamlessly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canonically, Etienne Rarnis is a Breton. For purposes of racial diversity among the main cast of this story, I am writing him as a Bosmer. I count this as a minor departure.


	5. Though None Tell That Tale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The three of us have a great deal to talk about," Jarl Balgruuf said.

Chapter 5: Though None Tell That Tale

Whiterun, 20th Last Seed, 4E 201.

Balgruuf sat at the head of the private table, bridging the gap between the two. Galmar heaped food onto his plate, but ate slowly after the first bite of guest-right. Rikke flattened and spread her dollop of berried cheesecream, not raising her spoon. The Jarl filled all three glasses from the pitcher, water tinted barely pink with a splash of wine. He knew his guests, and the stakes, well enough for that.

“Thank you for coming,” Rikke said finally. “I wasn’t sure whether you would get my message.”

Galmar shrugged and spoke between bites from a leg of slow-cooked goat. “White parchment. Something unsaid. And where would you go but here? White River, Whiterun. White parchment symbolizes neutrality, purity. Freshly fallen snow. A song yet to be written. You know,” he put down the bone and stared at her evenly across the table, “some would take a white parchment to symbolize surrender.”

Balgruuf let them stand off, unmoving, adjusting to one another’s presence, until he decided he’d had enough. He drew a folder paper from his belt, tossed it next to Rikke’s plate, but his words were for Galmar. “Yesterday a _dragon_ attacked my hold. I’ve received two letters in quick succession. The first one, four days ago, declared Ulfric Stormcloak captured and demanded that all his rebel followers stand down. This one arrived today, from Windhelm. I expect the other Jarls are in a similar position.”

Galmar broke the staring contest. “Ulfric is alive and well. Right of combat gives him claim to the throne of Skyrim; and now right of dragonsblood gives him claim to the Ruby Throne of Cyrodiil and all the Empire—though he has no wish to take it. Ulfric is the Dragonborn out of legend, I have seen it with my own eyes. He has slain a dragon, has been called to High Hrothgar to be so named by the Greybeards.”

“I saw a dragon at midday yesterday, flying east over the Yorgrim pass,” Rikke added. “Clay-brown, paler on the belly, big as a house.”

“That’s the one,” Balgruuf confirmed. “My wizard is in the midst of studying a relic he hopes will tell us more about them.”

Galmar nodded. “That’s the one we killed in Windhelm. But it’s not the one that destroyed Helgen. There’s at least one still out there, black, much bigger. And the songs say there will be more.”

Balgruuf templed his hands. “This changes things, you understand. We have to keep in mind who the real enemy is. If Ulfric’s attention is needed to battle the dragon menace—” 

“The real enemy. There’s something else.” Galmar frowned his discontent at reporting speculation rather than fact. “Why now? Why are the dragons returning now, just as we take up arms? Who stands to benefit?”

Balgruuf’s eyes were keen. “That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?”

“There were three conditions, in addition to the land, that the Dominion ensured were in the treaty. To outlaw the worship of Talos. To disband the Blades. And to give the justicars free rein to hunt down anyone who was a part of either.” He was voicing the thoughts of a restless night, thoughts that had not yet seen the light of day. “Have we forgotten what started the Great War? We all thought it was retaliation, for their decades of spying. Or symbolic— stripping the Emperor, personally, of his eyes and ears. But what if it was more than that? When the Thalmor delivered those heads to the Imperial Palace, they were not only killing the Emperor’s personal guard. They were killing every single dragonslayer they could find.”

“Then… what? They waited around for thirty years and then summoned dragons?” When she said it, it sounded no more plausible than when Ulfric whispered of plots in the dark.

“The Blades were hardly dragonslayers. They haven’t been since the second era,” Balgruuf pointed out.

“True enough. But the Thalmor did more than just kill them. They destroyed the library at the Temple, the greatest archive of knowledge about dragons in the world.” He glanced at Rikke. “I don’t know. It’s something to consider, that’s all.”

The low tones of hatred were worse-concealed in Rikke’s voice than in Galmar’s. “Whether or not the Thalmor are responsible for bringing dragons down on us,” she agreed, “the Dominion remains an existential threat; we must not lose sight of that. Not just to Skyrim, but to all of Tamriel. That’s _why_ we can’t let them tear us apart and pick the provinces off one by one. That’s _why_ , more than ever, we need to stay one Empire.”

“That’s _why_ we cannot remain a part of an Empire that capitulates to them. That gives them free access to our cities and our people.” Bitterness clung to his words. “I don’t know if we can win on our own when it comes to war with the Dominion. But I do know that the Empire will not win that war. _Did_ not win that war. So we must try without them.”

“Friends.” Balgruuf forestalled Rikke’s response. “The arguments on both sides are well-worn. And though I have great faith in both of you as diplomats, I do not think that we three tonight will resolve the debate that brought nine Jarls to an impasse two years ago. That is not why we are here.” He paused, looked at each of them, commanded their eyes. “We are here because the three of us are in a unique position to end this war. We have seen that a far greater foe demands the attention of our armies. Legate Rikke, you have the ear of Jarl Elisif and General Tullius. Galmar Stone-Fist, you have the ear of Jarl Ulfric, of—if we are to believe legend—the Dragonborn. Your history together,” he acknowledged, “and with Ulfric, may well be an asset. At the least, I expect you not to let it cloud your judgement. And I, I hold Whiterun, the centerhold. Neither army will get far without supply lines that run through this heartland. Without our harvest and our horses. We all know that. Though both of you have so far sent missives rather than battle-axes, I know that you will bring the war to my doorstep. But let me make one thing clear.” This was a man who had let his body soften though not grow weak, a man who was comfortable in his robes and circlet, a man who took to rulership the way he had never taken to being a legionnaire. And now his face was etched stone, his eyes flecks of ice. “I am not on the side of the ‘Stormcloaks’. Secession is an act of foolish pride, and it will be our last. I am not on the side of Titus Mede’s crumbling Empire. Signing that treaty was his last of many mistakes. I will not even say that I am on the side of Skyrim; every Nord claims this and every Nord means something different by it. I am on the side of Whiterun, pure and simple. I will defend her with three hundred soldiers and my dying breath.”

Neither of Balgruuf’s guests had any idea where the Jarl thought he was getting three hundred soldiers, but they had the grace not to press the matter.

“So,” Balgruuf pushed his empty plate away. “Let’s talk terms.”

“We saw what happened under Torygg. Skyrim needs a King who knows how to rule, who can stand up to Cyrodiil. Especially,” Galmar allowed, “if we’re to stay in the Empire. We shouldn’t be following Imperial policy. We should be the leaders who _set_ it.” He looked at Rikke. “Jarl Elisif is, what, twenty-five? A homecoming-child, who has never known war?”

“She is young,” Rikke said tensely. “But she has one skill that is exceedingly rare and valuable in a leader. She surrounds herself with many counsellors, and she _listens_ to what they have to say.”

“To install such a leader,” Balgruuf agreed, “is to put great power in the hands of several wise men and women, rather than in the hands of one.”

“It is a precious skill, but unless it is paired with the wisdom to choose counsellors, it is as dangerous as installing a madman who hears the voices of many. Who are Elisif’s counsellors? You,” Galmar nodded to Rikke, “very well. General Tullius, who she has not chosen, and who ‘advises’ her from the command-tent of his army. Has she kept Istlod’s witch by her side? And you’ve let her? Solitude is full of Thanes who have gained power by their canny investments, by piracy and profiteering, not by the virtue of their hearts. And if it’s Falk Firebeard who runs the city while she sits the throne, perhaps he should be Jarl instead.” Galmar twinged at the cool glower from across the table. “That went too far. I have barely met her. I am entirely willing to believe that she will be a fine Jarl— fair in _both_ senses. But,” he looked around the table, stating what they surely all knew, “Torygg’s pretty young widow is no _queen_ of Skyrim.”

“We might look to Ulfric’s legacy of rulership instead,” Rikke replied, her voice soft and edged. “We might have all of Skyrim follow the example of Windhelm, a paragon of cities.” She paused, caught in an eddy of the past. “I have never been there. Did you know that? Never. But I hear, from those who have, that now her streets are thick with refuse and skeever-dung, that her people are sickly from the air of forges, and that after dusk they fear the cutpurse and the cutthroat. I also hear that they love him, that they love him with wild abandon and count themselves as the jewel of Skyrim. Ignoring that nearly a third of her people live forgotten, crammed behind the walls of one district, because of the color of their skin and the shape of their ears. I hear that the dark-elves are barred by law from investment or money-lending, that they are not allowed inheritance.” She stared him down. “Is that true?”

“They are not allowed inheritance from Nords,” Galmar muttered, choosing not to make an argument of it.

“A city ruled by the whim of one man.” Her face crinkled in his direction. “If he truly listens to you, Galmar, then you must be blind to the plight of your people. But I suspect that you are neither blind nor the one who holds the reins of power where Ulfric is concerned. Do you truly, honestly believe that he is the King that Skyrim needs?”

“He is,” Galmar said slowly, “when the right people stay by his side.”

She twitched backwards.

“Galmar,” and there was a touch of warning in Balgruuf’s voice. “Ulfric’s claim may not even be an option. If he truly is the Dragonborn, doesn’t his destiny lie elsewhere than the Blue Palace? Would you have him fight for a throne rather than do what only he can do—slay the souls of dragons?”

“No,” Galmar said coldly, “I would have you and all the rest of the Jarls end this farce of pretending that the High King of Skyrim should be anyone but the one true heir to Talos, the Dragonborn, the greatest hero of our age. I would have a moot convene and affirm him, immediately, and all the warriors of Skyrim defend our cities against dragons in his name. While he battles the beasts across the land, I would have trusted, loyal men and women rule in all the Holds—including Elisif as Jarl of Solitude. And when the last dragon is dead, I would have him greeted in every city with the welcome he deserves, as a hero and our King.”

“Careful,” Balgruuf warned. “The Jarls will not affirm a king they fear will depose them.”

“I know. Igmund can keep his traitor’s-throne. We washed our hands of Markarth long ago. But Dengeir _must_ be reinstated. That was an underhanded coup, and Ulfric stands by his true friends.”

“More underhanded than what you did in Winterhold?” Rikke shot back.

He eyed her sidewise. “I thought you didn’t care what happened to Winterhold. ‘Let it crumble into the sea,’ I seem to recall.”

“People grow up. At least, some do.”

Galmar shrugged. “I’m sure Korir and his family would be happier returning to Windhelm anyway.”

“I’m beginning to see,” Balgruuf said, “some outline of stability emerge from chaos. Even without Siddgeir and Korir, we can form a majority bloc to pass the terms of a treaty. Idgrod Ravencrone, I trust to follow the winds of reason. Or, at least, the winds she follows blow in the same direction as reason. But would Igmund and Elisif agree to any treaty with Ulfric on the throne? Skald will follow Ulfric’s lead. Would they agree to any treaty without him as High King? And Laila, Laila. Who knows what Laila thinks is right?”

“She has declared for Ulfric,” Galmar reminded him.

“Yes, I know.”

“We’re still nowhere near a solution,” Rikke pointed out.

“Yes. Elisif is too inexperienced, too easily swayed. Ulfric is too… unpredictable. I know which of two evils I would choose, but several of my colleagues disagree.”

“Balgruuf,” Rikke started, “I think you should reconsider—”

“No. My place is here. I make a good Jarl. A good mediator,” he looked at the two of them. “But I would make a terrible king. I do not have the vision for it. It’s been offered to me before, and I refuse it now as I did then. I will not leave Whiterun.”

She insisted. “Maybe what Skyrim needs right now is a mediator, not a king.”

Galmar considered. “Or a regent, perhaps. Until the dragon crisis is over and we can all consider this with cooler heads.”

“If there will be a regent, let it be Elisif.”

Galmar shook his head. “The Thalmor may well attack, while we are weakened. We need someone who can command armies.”

“If the Thalmor attack, without Skyrim having seceded from the Empire, they will be declaring war on Cyrodiil as well. General Tullius will—”

“Will he? What happens if the Thalmor say Skyrim is in violation of the treaty, and sweep in? Does the Empire protect her wayward province, sending City-trained legionnaires into a three-way free-for-all between Elisif, Ulfric, and the Dominion? Or does the Emperor call back his prized General, call back the Fourth Legion to reinforce their homeland, knowing that they will be next? If the Dominion attacks, do you really expect Tullius to stay?”

She grimaced. “No.”

“Skyrim’s own legionnaires can and will defend her borders. But she will be doing it alone. Who will lead her in war? You?”

“If need be.”

“It’s not the worst idea. But Ulfric—”

“Ulfric will never accept that.” She shook her head. “But do you really think Ulfric will accept any terms—even a cease-fire, while he deals with the dragons—any terms that name a regent?”

“He would accept Skald.”

“Skald is the most disliked Jarl at the moot.”

Galmar thought for a moment. “Ulfric thinks he can win this war. He has no reason to consider a cease-fire under unfavorable terms. He wants the war to end, decisively, one way or another. Not to drag on without a real resolution.”

“And can he win this war?” she asked. They all looked around the table. That was the question, wasn’t it. “Let me put it another way: can he win this war, without hundreds, thousands of deaths? Without burning and gutting the towns and fields and cities that he claims he wants to rule, to protect? Without letting who knows how many dragons ravage the countryside unhindered? Without… casting aside his own destiny? Can he win this war before the end of the month? Because _we can._ ”

“Can we?” He couldn’t see how.

“Yes.” That was Balgruuf, certain of himself as ever. “You said it. Ulfric will not come to the negotiating table so long as he thinks he is in a position to win.” He exchanged a glance with Rikke. “I think you need to tell Galmar what’s about to happen in Falkreath.”

Her eyes narrowed, searched. Galmar’s instincts sharpened, several lines of possibility opening at once. Balgruuf was a player of the game. Last he had known her, Rikke was not. But a lot could change in two decades.

“The orders regarding Falkreath.” She hesitated. A novice liar would have blundered on. But if this was genuine, then she was hanging on the cusp of betraying intelligence to the enemy. An experienced liar would reproduce all of the turmoil this would cause her, told in the twitches of her face, the knit of her brow, the way she glanced down at her hands before setting her jaw. An expert liar would reproduce it perfectly. Was she genuine, or was she a very, very good liar?

“I hope you appreciate what I’m about to do, Galmar.” She was genuine. It was there in her voice, a well of emotion too complex to unravel, much less to fake. He had played politics in Markarth and in Riften and in Solitude. He had learned to trust his gut on these things. She was about to take this step.

“We all know that if Ulfric invades Falkreath he will likely take it. And now Tullius has lost a fort, an army at the pass. If it weren’t for his most recent letter to Balgruuf, I wouldn’t even know whether we’d lost a General too. You suffered a defeat—it was you, wasn’t it, leading the army at Haemar’s Pass? But you withdrew in good form. So Ulfric will likely take Falkreath. But he will not hold it. He will spend the rest of this war in Falkreath, fighting for every foot rocky forest.” She gathered herself. “Titus Mede is deploying the Third and Sixth legions to Fort Neugrad. The Second Legion is already garrisoned in Bruma, knowing it would break away and join Skyrim if we had a High King who so much as nodded in that direction. Mede knows you have to go through Falkreath, and if he’s not fast enough to beat you to it, he will retake it. He will retake it no matter how high the cost.”

“He can’t mobilize that fast. The Third and Sixth… they’re in the south. We’ll be marching to Solitude by the time he gets to Falkreath. Or we’ll wait for him in the Pale Pass.”

“He’s been mobilizing, from the day the news came from Solitude. This is an old Emperor, one who doesn’t want to be remembered as the man who lost the Empire without a battle. If Skyrim breaks away, High Rock will go too. He knows what he has to do to prevent that.”

“He’s exposing his southern border. It’s going to be Leyawiin and Bravil all over again.”

“He has a treaty protecting that border.”

“A thin piece of paper.”

She shook her head. “I’m not saying it was a good call. I’m saying those are the facts. I don’t want to see the able-bodied population of Eastmarch and the next generation of legionnaires watering the trees with their blood just because Ulfric is too damned selfish to iron out a cease-fire.” Her lips thinned. “And I hope you use those words when you tell him.”

Galmar looked away. He knew, if Falkreath were blocked from them, where Windhelm’s army would go instead. Did they? The pause grew long. Were they waiting for him to volunteer information of his own?

“So,” Balgruuf eyed him, and glanced between him and Rikke. “It would _seem_ that Ulfric Stormcloak is not in as good a position as he thought. I suggest we all sleep on the matter. Take some time to think about what we’re about to say next. Take some time to think on the issue of regency—whether Elisif’s court, with adjustments and appointments, could be made acceptable. Whether there is some commander to be found who could sit the throne while she remains Jarl in Solitude. Whether,” he looked between them, “we can prevent a new generation from suffering the losses we suffered. Whether we can turn Ulfric’s eye to the dragons. Let’s all keep in mind what is at stake.”

Their chairs scraped back from the table.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

When Rikke came to his rooms that night, Galmar was still up, still dressed. Expecting her. He offered her one of the high-backed cushioned chairs in front of the fireplace. Whiterun’s wood-wrought rooms were a warm contrast to the drafty stone of Windhelm. He sat too, and watched the flames, and watched her watch the flames. It was hard to match the soft flickering features of this woman with the hard soldier’s face at the negotiating table. It was easier to see in her now the profile of that laughing young woman with lavender in her hair. They sat, and watched the flames, and shared a silence of too many things to say and no good place to start.

“Why did you want me here?” he asked finally.

“Why did you have your man leave that mark, in the book about the Crown?”

“Oh. To be honest, I didn’t know you would be following the same trail.”

“But you thought someone would be, on behalf of Elisif. And that the mark might make its way to me, and that I’d know it came from you.”

He shrugged. “Call it fair warning. That was months ago, before the challenge. Things were different, then. I thought—I thought maybe talking would serve some purpose.”

Her voice was quiet, no longer full of that strident confidence of the young soldier he’d once known. “I still think it would. We can end this.”

He wasn’t sure whether she’d intended the double meaning. Suddenly, he shook his head. “I can’t do this. I can’t sit here with you and ignore what I’ve heard, ignore decades without a word.”

“How do you want this to go?”

“I want you to say that it’s not true. That you didn’t do it.”

“I can’t say that.” She looked away from the fire, had the respect to look at him. “I did send Ulfric to Cidhna. I did put him in a prison.” Now, half-shadowed, her face was old and unreadable.

He stared at her, at the way she could say it, could admit it, so simply. Emptily. He stared at her for a long time, working to control his own face. To control the desire to lash out at her, maybe with his words, maybe with his hands. To lash out until she showed him _something_. Galmar was not a man of anger, not ever. He saw the flicker of recognition in her eyes, that he was angry. Recognition, uncertainty, and maybe a bit of fear.

He couldn’t understand her. He didn’t _want_ to understand what it would take, to do that to the one you loved. “I don’t suppose,” he said finally, “that it matters why.”

“There are a lot of things I could tell you about what happened after you left, about Markarth. Does it matter to you, why?”

He didn’t have to think long. “No. Even if it was to save the world, even if to save the world I had to destroy the man I love, I would not do it. And I could not forgive you for doing it. So no, I don’t suppose it matters why you did it.”

Her lips thinned. “He is the Dragonborn, now. Haven’t you thought about— that, maybe, he _will_ save the world? And what price he will have to pay? You think it will not destroy him?”

“Of course I’ve thought about it,” he whispered. “I’ve thought about it every moment since the Greybeards called for him. No, to be honest, I thought about it even before then. And if there is a price to pay, I will stay by him in the hopes that I can be the one to pay it. And if it threatens to destroy him—”

“You cannot watch over him at every moment; you will go mad.” She swallowed.

Galmar’s face hardened. “Don’t dare to tell me what I cannot do. I wasn’t there for him, and look what happened. I’m the one who has stayed by his side these eighteen years. You don’t even know him anymore. You don’t even know me anymore.”

“No,” she admitted, “I don’t.”

“Why did you want me here?”

“Why did you spare my life?”

“To ask me that?”

“It’s a start.”

He took a deep breath. Saw again how she had sagged to the ground, blood smearing her face. “I didn’t kill you, Rikke, because I couldn’t. I didn’t kill you, because once upon a time I loved you. And he loved you, and you loved us. And that _means_ something to me. It always will. We belonged together, the three of us, we were strong together. And I don’t know when that started to go wrong—whether it was when he was captured, or when I argued with him about taking the city, or—or when you married him. I don’t know what’s wrong with us, that we’ve grown old into this loneliness that nothing seems to fill. But, for a time, we had something incredibly rare and beautiful, something that—despite the war—were some of the happiest years of my life. And you were a part of that. I could no more destroy you than I could cut off my own head, or his. And—” He cursed the weakness in his voice— “And when you hurt him, in the worst possible way you could hurt him, and you _knew_ , you _knew_ better than _anyone_ what that would do to him, when you betrayed him, it was like…” He couldn’t think of an analogy that would do it justice, couldn’t think of words that would not sound trite or overly simple or too ornate.

Maybe he didn’t have to. There were tears in her eyes, unshed, shining in the firelight. Her lips moved, soundlessly at first, and she had to work her voice into them. “I know.”

“I don’t understand how you could possibly know, and still have done it.”

They sat there, in silence, and her presence began to weigh on him. Her presence, again, in their lives after all this time. Her guilt, that he could not forgive. Her pain, that he could not ignore. His anger, that he could not quell, and his resentment that she should cause in him such an instability of control. He did not like feeling this way. He did not like the reminder that the greatest harms come from those closest. The reminder of his great responsibility, now growing weightier as Ulfric took on the burdens of the Dragonborn. When one man supports the weight of the world, who will support him? And who will support the man who supports him?

It was all supposed to have gone differently. A triangle, as the builders’ saying goes, is the strongest shape.

“I think it’s time for you to go,” he said.

She went.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

When Rikke woke with the dawn, Balgruuf’s door was still closed, so she dressed in light traveling leather and wandered down into the main of the magnificent Dragonsreach hall. She had spent the night mired in uneasy dreams, dreams in which she wandered, searching, climbing and descending endless twisting stone steps that went nowhere. But the light of day in Whiterun dispelled the sticky tendrils of dreams. Galmar was in the meadhall already too, wearing his armor over fresh linens, and he was conversing with the Jarl’s wizard. It was the tilt of his shoulders that made Rikke think their low words were more than just pleasantries. She may not have the practiced skill to read the wordless language of strangers but, whatever he may say about the years passing by, she still had some sense of this man’s body. The way he looked when he wanted something, questioning. The way the line of his neck, when he turned away, caught sight of her and cut the conversation short, showed that he’d found the answer disappointing.

Then Balgruuf found them and brought them back to the private table for a light breakfast of fruit and porridge. When she and Galmar nodded their greetings and took their seats, there was nothing left of words spoken and unspoken by firelight. They reconvened as statesmen, as representatives of interests greater than themselves.

“Allow me,” Galmar started, stirring honey into his porridge, “to open with a thrust of grim realism. If you think blocking Ulfric from Falkreath will keep him from pressing his claim, you’re mistaken. There is another way to reach to Solitude.” Balgruuf drew himself up, and Galmar echoed Rikke’s words from yesterday. “I’m just telling the facts. Ulfric has a great deal of respect for you. He respects the autonomy of your Hold, understands your desire to protect your people. Many men have come from Whiterun and her farmsteads to join up in Windhelm; your people are our brothers. It has been out of this respect, and the desire to liberate Falkreath from that puppet-boy, that Ulfric has not pressed you with the threat of war. Despite the urging of generals who say we could take Whiterun and strike directly through Dragon Bridge to Solitude. This new information does not change that. Titus Mede’s Legions may well secure the southern Hold, but will he venture into the interior? He may be willing to fight us across hills and forests, but if we hold the crossing at Riverwood will he throw himself on our fortifications? I know,” he said to Balgruuf, “why you are so eager to bring Ulfric to the negotiating table. With the Emperor poised to take Falkreath, and the north winter-locked, the war will come through Whiterun.”

“Whether in Whiterun or elsewhere, I would rather that war be fought with words, not lives.”

“That’s a touch of irony, isn’t it? We have—we had—an old-law meant to just so prevent the waste of lives. To let two men do the fighting of many, and let all abide by the outcome of their trial. Ours is not the side that insisted on this war, by not abiding.”

“An old law,” Rikke broke in, “for a time when strength in combat determined a good king. Those times are long, long past.”

“I would rather, too,” Galmar continued, “that this war be fought without brother shedding the blood of brother. And if a treaty acknowledged Ulfric’s right as High King, I am sure that the details would be of little matter—that Elisif maintain her court; perhaps the capital would move to Windhelm, and Solitude remain entirely untouched. Kraldar reinstated in Winterhold. If Cyrodiil has troops in Falkreath, I don’t see how we can insist on ousting their chosen Jarl, at least not right away. And, after all, it is the _throne_ that this war is about, the throne and the future relations between Skyrim and the Empire. Even you know Ulfric well enough to see that he will consider any treaty naming a regent as conceding the very thing we’re fighting for. He will not sign such a treaty.” Galmar paused. “I think he’s wrong.”

They let out their breaths. Galmar went on. “I think Ulfric needs to be fighting dragons, _today_ , tomorrow, and every day until they are gone. The lives spent taking Whiterun would be a tragedy. The _time_ spent taking Whiterun, spent pushing through to Solitude, might be our undoing. As for the throne… if Skyrim turns away from the Dragonborn that saves her, I will weep for the loss of the land I loved and bled for. But we all know well enough that he will not treat while he can win.” He glanced at Balgruuf. “We do have the forces to take your city. Even if on the way we have to fight the ragged remnants of the Fourth Legion, or the fresh youths from Solitude, we do have the numbers to do it. But I think,” he looked down, “that if we should fail and turn back from the gates of Whiterun, forcing Ulfric to the negotiating table, it would not be a bad thing.”

Rikke stared at him.

He caught her meaning. “Still, I will do nothing, _nothing_ but fight by his side as well as I can. Do not do the insult of asking otherwise.”

That was the difference between them, Rikke realized. The choice they made when the things they believed in came apart from the people they believed in. Galmar was fighting for him even while believing he was wrong. She didn’t understand how he could do it. She didn’t _want_ to understand what you would have to become, to love someone whose moral compass you could no longer trust.

Balgruuf was glowering. “If Ulfric intends to attack my city, I have every reason to invite Solitude’s growing army to help me defend it. He will see this as my joining up against him, but he will have forced me to it.”

“Wait.” Several lines of possibility opened to her. “I know a battle at Whiterun is not what you want, but you’ve known it would be nearly inevitable. You’ve been preparing. Now one of two things will happen. Ulfric loses at Whiterun, and negotiates. Or Ulfric takes Whiterun. Either way, _your_ priority is to remain Jarl.” She looked around. “I think that’s in all our interests. Keep in mind that Solitude’s army is untested. Only so many men can line the walls of a city under siege. If, with the Legion’s help, you could with near-certainty prevail, then you should take that help. But you should not risk your relations with Ulfric for a small increase in your chances. Make this deal with him,” she glanced at Galmar, “and I think he will take it. If he attacks you, he attacks Whiterun, not the Legion. He attacks his kinsman, not his enemy. Most likely, he will still believe he must do so. But no matter who wins the battle for Whiterun, you will treat each other as kinsmen. On the field, fallen men will be left to the healers. If Ulfric should surrender at the gates, neither he nor his people will be harmed nor held. He will be free to treat with you and the Jarls or to return to Windhem. And if he should take the city, neither you nor yours will be harmed or held. You will remain Jarl, with your court, and apart from winning passage through your hold he will not interfere with your rule. He will give fair trade and reparations for what his army takes. Let he who finds that he is losing surrender early, and spare his men.”

She checked with Galmar. He looked thoughtful, but unconvinced. “That sounds like a good deal for Solitude. You don’t risk any of your own soldiers.”

“The Legion risks nothing, and gains nothing. This ends in Ulfric’s victory or a draw. I should be convincing Balgruuf to take our aid, to let us into the city, if I were negotiating purely on behalf of Elisif. My boys would die alongside his, but if or when we drove Ulfric back, we would have a stronghold on his doorstep. That would end the war just as surely. But it would be a desperate and bloody battle on all sides.”

“It’s much easier to ask the Legion’s aid,” Balgruuf muttered, “than to get them to leave.”

“But you’re not convincing Balgruuf to take your aid,” Galmar noted.

“No. Because this is a good plan. Because a small chance of Whiterun held by Ulfric, with Balgruuf exiled or executed, is much worse than a larger chance of Stormcloak supply lines through the hold while Balgruuf stays in Whiterun, and tries to talk sense to him. And,” she said grimly, “because I will hold my army in reserve, on the plains, to ensure that Ulfric cannot retreat. Either Balgruuf surrenders the city, or Ulfric surrenders at the gate. This war will be won or lost at Whiterun.”

“And what will keep you from attacking our rear, pinching us between the Legion and Whiterun’s walls? Balgruuf, you cannot enforce your terms, you cannot guarantee that, with or without your leave, the Legion will not join this fight. And if they do, if they stab us in the back, there will be a bloodbath.”

Balgruuf’s eyes were narrow and bright. “But I do have a guarantee. My other two hundred men.” His mouth twitched in a secret smile. “Hill-men. Bandits. The gangs I’ve cultivated working relationships with over the years.” He looked at Rikke. “You will be on the plains, by the river, but they will be in the hills, in a hundred hidden places. And if the Legion so much as moves towards Whiterun without seeing Ulfric’s banner replace the white flag of surrender, they will attack and it will be the pincher who will be pinched.”

Rikke frowned. “That _does_ make it sound like a bad deal for Solitude. To force us to watch, while Ulfric takes Whiterun.” She could already imagine what it would be like to wait out there on the plain, hearing the din of fighting, unable to see who was winning. Itching to make the call, not knowing whether there really were two hundred hill-men with arrows ready to rain down on them. Balgruuf was a man who could outbluff the best tavern dice-players.

“It’s a bad deal for Whiterun,” the Jarl growled. “And exactly what I was trying to avoid. This is not our fight.”

“It’s a bad deal for Ulfric,” Galmar added. “To him it will look an awful lot like walking into a trap, protected only by the guarantee of a man who would rather fight him than join his cause.”

They looked around. Finally, Rikke said, “We have failed to find a treaty which will be equally agreeable to all. Instead we have found a battle that is equally disagreeable to all.”

“You’ve just summed up the nature of warfare,” Galmar said wryly.

The lines of Balgruuf’s face ran deep with thought and worry. “Let’s make it a short war, at least. You two know the history of Dragonsreach? What better place, if we’re to catch a dragon on our walls. I’ll do it.”

“I can’t speak for Ulfric, but I will advise him to agree to your terms. But for our part… we still don’t have a plan, for afterwards. What compromise we could pass by the Jarls of the moot.” That was Galmar, ever the realist.

Balgruuf looked weary with the decisions he had already made today. “We’ll work that out when we come to it.”

“We need to know what Jarl Laila is thinking,” Rikke reminded them. “It might all turn on her, the fifth vote. Galmar, you’ve worked with her, do you have some idea of what arrangement she might back?”

“Laila is a traditionalist. This makes her plain and forthright, and she expects the same from others. The only way to find out what she will support is to simply ask her. If we are seen as… manipulating matters behind the scenes, she may well resist our proposal on principle. She’s fighting a losing battle in Riften, a battle against the foreign cultures of Imperial merchantry and elven immigrants. She wants the old ways, the days when a Jarl was in control of her city in fact as well as in name.” He sighed. “How do I put this? Laila wishes the world ran on a set of rules that anyone could pick up and read, and the Empire represents such a system that has tried and has miserably failed. Ulfric’s vision for the world, at least, is one she can understand. If we are to win her loyalty, we will have to offer the same. And winning her will take time.”

“Will you get a chance to speak to her?”

He shook his head. “I doubt it. We have another ambassador in Riften, and I will be needed in Windhelm. To keep talking to Ulfric. I will try, by letter, to get through to her.”

“Laila responds much better to personal conversation.” Balgruuf turned to Rikke. “Are you needed back in Solitude to prepare your army?”

She thought about it. Aldis could oversee the logistics, Caesennius could lead the march. And it would be a matter of weeks, not days, for Windhelm and Whiterun to agree to terms, for the Stormcloak army to group and head out. “I can do it by letter. It’s an advantage of the Legion—I have good men under me; delegation is part of the job. But, I don’t know Laila as the two of you do. And I’m no diplomat.”

“It’s an advantage of the Legion,” Galmar echoed. “We learn to do the job that’s given to us. You’re doing fine.” It was almost a compliment.

“I’ll give you a letter of introduction. Without naming you, of course, in case you are stopped along the way.” Balgruuf stood, stretched, and they followed suit.

Rikke ran through a mental list of the contents of her saddlebags, a list of what she would need. What letters to write before leaving Whiterun for Riften. Wondering whether she would be going straight from Riften to join the army on the plains. This was not what she’d had in mind for this trip.

“One other thing,” Galmar stopped her as they maneuvered around the table. “You’ll be moving through our territory, be careful. And… avoid Darkwater Crossing. We have a large garrison there now.”

“Thanks.” There was something about the way he said it, as if the information were a guilty gift to her. So before he could move away, she pressed for more. “What will you tell Ulfric?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure yet. It depends,” and he said it with a too-late wince of self-awareness, “on what mood he’s in.”


	6. Saviors to Free Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Nazir, assassin of Hammerfell, this was the longest twenty-four hours of his life.

Chapter Six: Saviors to Free Us

Whiterun Hold, 20th Last Seed, 4E 201.

Saadia woke groggily to the sway of a horse in the predawn light. She was nestled up against a warm, broad chest, his muscular arms coming around her protectively to hold the reins.

She sat bolt upright, finding that her hands were bound. She knew her captor without craning around for a look. Not his name or his face, but _what_ he was.

“So, they sent a _hahstalah_ after me, did they?” Her voice came out as a parched croak. “Water?”

A large dark hand obliged, tilting a skin to her lips. Saadia drank it all. She would need her strength. She spared a thought for the girl who’d sold her, but the thought was bitter with sadness rather than anger. This was a world where you made it alone, or you didn’t make it at all. Apparently the girl had understood that all too well. And Saadia understood it too.

“Why haven’t you killed me yet, _hahstalah_?”

He made no response, but he didn’t have to.

“So, they want me alive. Why are you here, _hahstalah_ , if they want me alive? It must grate on you, to do a thug’s work.”

Still, no response.

“The strong, silent type? I can appreciate that. Please, allow me to do the talking for you. Stop me if I get anything wrong.” She gave herself a moment to sort it all out. “The Forebears sent a party of Alik’r to capture me, alive. They wouldn’t assign an assassin to me, and neither would Mother. No, that’s it. You’re not here for me at all. Mother assigned you to the Alik’r to kill anyone who defected or helped me. Maybe to kill them all if they failed. Keep them on their toes.” She laughed. “You’re no different from a _commissair_. Such a wonderful use of your talents. The _one_ thing I can’t figure out is why I’m here now, sitting on your horse.” There was one possible explanation, and it gave her a chance. “But if I had to guess, I would guess that it’s because, in fact, the Alik’r are incompetents. I know this. You know this. I’ve been running from them. You’ve been overseeing them. It must have been very frustrating for you. So you got sick of it, and you decided to arrange my capture yourself. You’re doing their job for them.”

This was it, her edge. “Why are you doing the work of incompetents, _hahstalah_? You do not kill for money, or for fame. Why do you give your allegiance to one who would give you the task of a nanny, a horse-spur? I have outwitted them, your masters _and_ their dogs, for five years. Am I not more worthy of your respect than they are?”

When he offered no answer, she went on. Words were her only weapon now, and one she knew how to wield. “You must have some idea of who I am, of why they want me alive. You must know that they will use me as a pawn in their games, _hahstalah_. And as they are using me, they are also using you.”

Across the plains of Whiterun Hold to their right, the first light of dawn was touching the horizon. Before them, Saadia saw the shadow of an old mining door set into a hill. A bandit’s haven now, no doubt. She needed to get him to say something to her, anything, before he decided to turn her over to the others. “Will you be their tool? Or are you a man, the author of your own destiny?”

He dismounted, tied the horse to a hitching post, and easily lifted her from its back. Now that they were face-to-face, he standing head and shoulders taller than her, she got a good look at the smooth hale face accented by deep brown eyes and a well-kept knotted goatee. A face framed by the crimson cloth of his profession, his station. “To each man, the gods give a talent,” he said, a hand lightly guiding her shoulder towards the door. “Let every man play his part, and not play the part of any other. I am _hahstalah_ , an assassin. I am not the judge, I am the executioner. I am the tool.”

 _I need a new plan,_ Saadia thought.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

Inside the twisting, smoky mining caverns, most of the bandits stayed clear of the large Redguard and his charge. But one, perhaps a leader, swaggered across their path to look her over. “You didn’t mention she had teats like Dibella,” he said, casually running his hand over the front of his pants. “I think I’ve got a new proposal in regards t’my pay.”

Smooth as a silk sash, her captor held one of his scimitars in hand. “Turn your eyes elsewhere,” he said simply. “Or I will cut them out.”

“Spit on us,” the bandit muttered as he pushed past, “and we’ll spit on you, darkie.”

The assassin’s blade stayed out for the rest of the walk through the encampment. A second lay ready on his right hip. He led her, without a word, around the edge of a waterfall and up a wooden ramp. Saadia, too, was too busy to make witty conversation. Too busy memorizing their route, the locations of weapons, the number of bandits. Too busy knowing that she would not make it out this way alone.

At the top of the ramp a group of bleary-eyed men sat at a picked-over banquet table. But more crucial to Saadia’s eye was the passage behind them, the passage that lead to the light of day. One of the men, on the end, swayed to his feet. “Nazir! Where have you been? Oh.” He caught sight of her. “Morwha’s arms, is that—”

Nazir inclined his head to the man in a passable facsimile of a polite court insult, which was utterly ruined by the fact that his scimitar was still naked in his hand. He deepened into a half-bow to Saadia, the bow of of one who held real power to one who held mere rank. Appropriate for a captor to his hostage. “Lady Iman, First Daughter of House Suda. May I introduce Kematu, a Mulazm of the Alik’r.”

Kematu was barrel-chested, his face filled out where Nazir’s was lean. He looked around at the five others who had gotten up from the table and stood loosely, bow-legged. “You hear that, boys? We’re going home!” He eyed the other man, suddenly in command of his wits, and Iman could see the history of their rivalry written in the pause between them. “So, the assassin can sheath his claws and earn his keep after all. I’ll put in a good word for you.”

“And I,” Nazir said flatly, “will report on exactly how you ran this operation.”

“Is that so?” Kematu drew his scimitar slowly, musically. “I didn’t take you for a paper-pusher.” The other five drew and fanned out.

Kematu took one step forward. Iman’s bound elbows hit the hard-packed earth, her arms and shoulders protesting as both feet lashed out to kick his knees from under him. The Alik’r leader fell forward, and Nazir’s blade sliced through the back of his neck. Hot blood spattered her skin, but Iman stayed pressed into the ground as the assassin stood over her, grunting and slicing in five directions at once.

The assassin did not cry out when he fell. She felt a bulk drop onto her legs and roll off as she kicked and sprang up, only to find she was the only one standing. Besides Kematu, five warriors lay dead of quick neat deaths, of slashes to the throat, of cuts to the side of the knee, some of them with a sword-arm laid open to the bone. But the cloth on Nazir’s back was dark and wet with blood, his breath labored as he tried and failed to roll onto his side.

Iman sliced her bonds on Kematu’s unbloodied scimitar and took it up for herself. She gave her former captor a helping shove with her boot. “I doubt the _elder_ Lady Suda will be happy with this outcome. She sent you to punish them if they failed. Did she mention what would happen to _you_ if _you_ failed?” She saw from his expression that he knew all too well. “Swear your allegiance to me, _hahstalah_. From this moment forward, you are the tool in _my_ hand.”

His baritone was marred by wheezing pain. “My life is forfeit. Kill me now.”

“You life is mine. Swear yourself to me.”

He hesitated long enough that she knew he was torn, that there was a will to live beneath that strict training. But in the end, he made his decision. “I would rather die than live dishonored.”

Iman, First Daughter of House Suda, stepped away. “Then you’ll have to do it yourself. I’m not like you.” 

Saadia, barmaid of Whiterun, now in search of new employ, took what looked to be of use from the warriors’ den and stepped out into the light of a new day.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

Nazir the _hahstalah_ did not throw himself on his sword. For the second time in his life, he had killed the wrong people. The first time, he had pledged himself to kill only on the orders of a patron. And now, now he had killed without fulfilling his patron’s conditions. Killled his patron’s men, and inherited their duty, if he wished to ever return home. No, he did not throw himself on his sword. So long as the Suda woman lived free, he had a job to do.

He tracked her by the prints of her horse in the soft fertile land of Whiterun Hold. She was riding fast and light, most of the saddlebags abandoned in a heap. He gave a bag of gems to a stuttering stable-boy for his best steed, and did not bother to wait for tack. He was scarcely half a day behind her.

It should have been difficult to track her on the hard stone roads; she could have doubled back and headed west. But she unmistakably took the mountain-road east from Whiterun. Along the way, she left him messages weighted and dropped next to the road’s markerstones. Though collecting them slowed him down, he dismounted for every one. What was she playing at?

 _What will you do when you catch me?_ the first one said, written in charcoal with a wide looping hand.

 _What is in Hammerfell that is worth going back for?_ said the second.

Then, _It’s not too late for you to make a new life for yourself. I did._

 _Does this mean,_ she wrote later, _that you value my life more than your own?_

_I wish you’d let me have a campfire tonight. It’s going to be cold._

_Why don’t you respond to any of my letters? I’m starting to think you don’t like me._

He nearly missed when she turned off the road onto a narrow climb into the mountains of the Rift. But that was when he knew that she had caught sight of him, that she was gaining the upper ground to keep a view of the road below her. The coy notes stopped. She was afraid.

He found her, waiting for him, as the sun dipped below the rim of the mountains. She’d given her lathered horse the freedom to graze, and untethered it wandered from the spot where she stood framed by the angry orange sky. The spot where she stood, her back to a sheer cliff, scimitar held inexpertly before her.

Nazir dismounted, caught the horse, and let his bridleless mount go free instead. He, at least, expected to be needing a horse again. He approached the fugitive slowly, just so that he would not have to raise his voice to be heard.

“I know what you’re doing.” She was no fighter, but she had a mind for tactics, in and out of court.

“Come on then, dance with me,” she called back. “Or else turn around and let us go our own ways. It’s not exile. It’s a choice. And if you make that choice, it will the the first of many you can make. Free of patronage, free of family, just free.”

Nazir found what he was looking for, picking up a large fallen branch. His scimitars stayed on his belt as he advanced on her.

Her words came faster. “You must see that you cannot succeed. If I am willing to jump, if I am willing to die rather than be dragged back to that puppet-show of justice, then you cannot succeed. You just have a choice about how you will fail. Will you fail because I have escaped? Or will you fail because I have died? What, then, will my death serve for you? Are you, assassin, so enamored of death that you would end my life for no purpose? On no-one’s orders?”

He paused, two sword-lengths away. Studied her. “And are you willing to die? Death is a messy, painful, hopeless thing. Live, come home, and play the game at court, where you have talent. This,” he indicated the blade, the cliff, and somehow his gesture encompassed all of Skyrim, “this is not your talent.”

She raised her chin, stepped into a beginner’s dueling stance, her two-handed grip swept behind her left hip. “I have found a happiness here that you cannot begin to understand. And yes, I am willing to die rather than lose it.”

The standoff lasted a long minute. Nazir knew that the growing dusk would not be to his advantage.

He tossed his stick aside. His shoulders slumped. This time, when he spoke, his voice did not ring out loud and clear. “I do not know how to be anything else than what I am,” he said truthfully. “I have never surrendered, and I do not know how to start.”

“Walk back to your horse, and ride away. Don’t come back.”

“This morning,” he started tentatively, “you told me to swear myself to you. If I did so now, what would we do, where would we go?”

Her face was an unreadable silhouette. “Too late. That offer has expired. Your choices are your own, I will not be responsible for you. Leave. Make something of your life.”

Again, he hesitated, but then he started backing away. She straightened a bit, watched him go.

The unmistakeable whistling of an arrow from below ended with a wet thunk into flesh and her sudden cry. Nazir barely heard his own unbidden shout. He ran for her as she fell, as she slipped over the side of the cliff, her hands scrabbling for a hold.

“Take my hand!”

She hung a foot below the lip, her face craned up to him and crinkled with pain and tears.

“I don’t believe,” she gasped, “that you have it in you to change.” She let go.

The last light of evening glimmered on the water below as it swallowed her body.

With the barest moment of hesitation, Nazir leapt after her.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

He woke to pain and the sound of scales scraping slowly against stone. But he was alive, and now every instinct was tuned to staying that way. Without moving, without a change in his even breathing, Nazir cracked his eyes open to peek between his lashes.

There was light. The barest of blue diffuse light. But not enough to see by from where he lay. His other senses, then, would have to do. He lay on cold stone. The air was dank and smelled of things that grew and rotted, a rich dark smell of mold. Somewhere nearby, water dripped into water and echoed off a close wall. Most importantly, familiar weight lay against his leg, and the other between his leg and the stone.

The slithering stopped. Nazir lay, breathing, keenly aware of the distance between his hand and his hilt, his head at the wrong angle to see whatever creature stalked him.

It was a dragon. A dragon’s head, horned and scaled with wide-set eyes, craned around to stare into his face. No, a dragonling, with a head the size of a man’s.

It had a man’s voice, too, though soft and sibilant. “You are awake,” he said. “I can feel the heat of you.”

Nazir fully opened his eyes, sat up as the face withdrew. Not a dragon, of course, but an Argonian, a man-lizard of the Black Marsh. His hand still touched his pommel, but he did not think this thin, miserable creature was his captor.

The faint blue glow came from some mushrooms which grew on the high, dry part of the wall, reaching tendrils down into a dip where water dripped and collected. There were similar such plants in the caverns of the western Jerall mountains. Nazir suspected that these specimen, too, were uninteresting to his hobby.

“Have you seen a woman? Black hair, dark skin like mine?”

The Argonian had retreated and was watching him. He wore only britches, and they were filthy. “They brought her in with you, maybe an hour ago. She was hurt, bleeding, and they took her away again.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

Only a foolish assassin counted a target dead before he felt the pulse leave the body. This case was no different. “Who are ‘they’?”

“The Falmer. Nasty creatures, elves, they live in the caves, come out at night sometimes. Very territorial. They usually keep to themselves around here, but I was going for a swim, and they were much farther out than I’d ever seen—”

“How long have you been here?”

“Is it the twentieth? Then it’s been… by the Hist, it’s been five days.” He looked like he hadn’t eaten in all that time. “I’ve thought about escaping… it’s an easy lock on the door. But I have no weapons, the Falmer are born killers, and they have _chaurus_ for pets. I suppose I was hoping that someone else would come along.” His eyes flickered down to Nazir’s blades. “Gods am I glad to see you. My name is Derkeethus. I take it you can use those things?”

“Nazir. I will fight free of this place, but my priority is to find the woman, to see her fate for myself.”

Derkeethus fished a pair of small bones from the pocket of his britches. “I’ll take that. Better than nothing. Been getting plenty of practice locking and unlocking this door—caught a mouse a few days back. But when they’re not around they close a second door up there. When they are around, well… Oh, there’s one thing you have to know about the Falmer— they’re blind, they hunt completely by ear. We might be able to avoid a fight, but you have to be very _very_ quiet up there.”

Nazir eased his twin scimitars from their sheaths. “That will not be a problem.”

The gate swung open, and Derkeethus watched him pad through on soft leather boots. There was newfound awe and respect in his voice. “My people call your kind _suhsseetcl_ , the shadowscales,” he said. “Those born under the sign of the Shadow.”

“My people have no birthsigns in the stars. Deathsigns might be more appropriate. I am one of many deaths a man can die.”

At the top of the flight of stairs was a doorway which should have been blocked from the other side. But it lay open, and on the ground under the lever lay a piece of waterlogged parchment, scrawled in coal. Neither Falmer nor their bodies were in evidence.

 _How many times,_ Nazir read, _must I spare your life before you let me have mine?_

“It must be difficult sometimes,” the Argonian whispered, “to choose the path of death instead of life.” He thought about it for a moment, as Nazir folded the parchment into his damp pouch. “Actually, I imagine sometimes the hard part is choosing life.”

There were two tunnels, and no indication of which way she had gone. They picked one and found themselves in a low wide passage with a breeding pair of fast, thickly carapaced monsters brandishing sharp mandibles and spitting burning poison. Nazir shoved his companion backwards and charged in, trusting to his natural resistance as the only shield he would have.

His left blade parried a set of mandibles, controlling the angle of the head. The other sliced up and under, following the natural grain of the neck-ridges. The creature screeched but did not slow. Cool air brushed by his chest as black phlegm ate through his shirt. More of the stuff dripped into the water deep as his knees, and it grew warm. Warmth, too, flowed from his thigh to mingle with water and spittle. A lucky opening and a sharp downwards strike embedded a scimitar in the screeching head. One. The second monster charged, hit him bodily with the force of a horse. When his cut leg hit the water, pain blazed and stole all awareness for several long moments. He was submerged, it was atop him. Pressure stepped onto his chest— a sharp-clawed foreleg punctured through and air exploded from his mouth. It took the strength of both arms to blindly drive his remaining scimitar up and into its underbelly. Hoping it would be enough.

Derkeethus watched the Redguard disappear beneath the swarming carapace. He backed up to the corner of the passageway, hoping the huge crawler would not sense him. It exulted in the ecstasy of the kill, twitching and spasming, until Derkeethus saw that it, like its mate, stilled. His first step was tentative, fully expecting the gleaming husk to come alive again and slice him open. His second step was fast, frantic as he pulled the Redguard’s head from the water, brushed against the strong beat of the pulse in his neck, saw that he lay impaled on one long leg. The Argonian miner felt thin bile rise in his throat as he used both hands to shove the hard slick carcass up and away, watching flesh tear and blood bloom into the water. The man was dead. Surely the man was dead, after all that blood. But the pulse in his neck belied those fears.

Something—the lightest ripple of water—sent Derkeethus scrambling for the scimitar sticking up from the first corpse. He froze, hands on its hilt, listening to the silence. He drew and cringed at the scrape of metal on hard carapace. There it was again—the quiet lapping of water on stone. The slow careful stalk of a Falmer.

He crouched, frozen, within striking range of the tunnel out. His arms cried out at the weight of the blade. His legs seized up in cold fear. When a blind grey head tilted around the corner, his heart skipped, his arms came down as hard as they could, he hit something hard, heard the sickly crunching of bone. His every muscle sang and trembled, blood pounded through his neck, yet did not seem to reach his reeling head. He retched dryly into the water. If there had been a second Falmer, he would have been dead.

There was not a second Falmer. Derkeethus held two scimitars under his arm and dragged the heavy body of the Redguard through the shallow water, up a blessed incline. There was no way to be quiet. There was no way to listen for those who hunted him. The sound of his breath alone tore from him in ragged desperation, a pitiful sound echoing from the walls. There was no way to be quiet, so he would be fast.

Derkeethus did not stop when he reached the heavy door and pushed through into the chill night air. He hooked his arms more securely under the Redguard’s shoulder and dragged him over slick bounders and over dewey grass. His eyes searched for movement, for pursuit. The back of his neck prickled and crawled. Darker shadows within shadows gleamed like the armor of huge insects, moving suddenly to overwhelm him—

When his feet hit the cobblestones of a road, he dropped to his knees over the body he had dragged all this way. The body he had dragged without thinking to staunch bleeding or to check for a heartbeat. The body he was sure was, by now, dead.

“Why didn’t you leave me?” the Redguard croaked in the darkness. Derkeethus jumped, his scales shifting and shivering.

“Oh, Gods,” was all he managed. His hands scrabbled over the torn remnants of the man’s shirt, coming away warm and wet.

“My leg, too. Left.” His breath hitched when Derkeethus accidentally probed too hard. “Pack a poultice—do you know how? Grass, anything fresh. No dirt. Use my headwrap, my cloak, tie it tight.”

He did know how. He could do this. “Blue flowers,” he said. “Blue flowers if I can find them.” He didn’t have to go far before he touched some taller stems. He couldn’t tell the color of the flowers in the cloudy night, but Nazir took a bitter mouthful to chew and said they were right.

“You have to move,” the large man said, standing unsteadily once his wounds were inexpertly bound. “It’s not warm enough to stay still, especially for a coldblood.” He took back his weapons. “I need to return, to find my charge. Thank you.”

That took a moment to sink in, and for the first time since leaving his cell, Derkeethus felt something that was not blind terror. “You—no! I did _not_ drag you out just for you to go right back in there—”

“I must find her.”

“Are you mad? She’s either dead, in which case it does you no good to be dead _with_ her, or she somehow made it out of there, in which case you’re not going to catch up with her by _hobbling_.” To prove his point, he gave the big man a little shove, and had to catch hold of his arm to keep him from falling. Something had come unhinged in his own head, surely, to speak to a shadowscale that way. “I’m taking you home with me. Annekke will patch us right up, Sondas will get some hot food into us. By the Hist—my little Hrefna. She’ll be so worried.”

The Redguard took a tentative step on his torn leg, winced. “For tonight,” he agreed at last. Did he hope that the Suda woman was alive, that he had a chance at returning to his life? Or did he hope that she was dead, and that the decision were made for him? He shoved those thoughts aside.

They chewed bitter, grassy flowers and followed the song of water until Derkeethus got his bearings and found the crossing-bridge. Sure enough, across the wide river Nazir could see the lights of low wood-built houses nestled among the trees.

The roaring river drowned out any conversation they might have had as they crossed the bridge. Nazir’s practiced eyes picked out the forms, dark against dark, that stood watch over the road as it branched into the tiny town. “No walls, for a border-town,” he murmured once they had crossed.

“It’s not a town, really. More of a mining encampment. Verner and Anne found corundum here, oh, six years ago, hired up some miners. We never expected to be in the middle of a war, but it’s not like we’re on the front. We get men passing through, good business. Recruits going north, soldiers coming south. We send all our ore up to Windhelm, get whatever price we ask.”

“It looks like the soldiers have decided to protect their investment.”

Derkeethus sniffed. “Horses, too. And meat cooking.” He shuffled towards the first building.

A pair of men, shadows behind a torch, stepped into their way and shoved the light into their faces. “Halt, in the name of Ulfric Stormcloak. What’s your business?”

The Argonian stepped forward. “I live here. I’m a miner. Name of Derkeethus. I’ve been a Falmer captive these five days, quite a story, I assure you—”

The soldiers exchanged a glance. Nazir peered past them, at the silent town in the silent night. His instincts prickled even when he could not put a name to them.

“Annekke and Verner know me,” Derkeethus insisted. “I’m a friend, feel free to check with them. Ask Tormir, I look after her little Hrefna. This is my home.”

“Come with us.”

Nazir put a hand on the Argonian’s shoulder. His other hand hovered near his hilt. “Thanks, my friend, for your hospitality, but I am happy camping in the woods. I would not be an imposition.”

The soldiers were having none of it. “You too, come along. Or there’ll be trouble.”

They both stepped back. Derkeethus was still grasping at words. Nazir was figuring on how much his injuries would slow him on the draw. “Please, we don’t want any trouble. Just let us talk to Annekke.”

The two soldiers drew, and Nazir matched their tempo. Four blades gleamed by torchlight. “The traitors are all dead. And you’re about to join them.” The soldier tossed his torch aside.

Nazir stepped forward to meet both sword-swings and shoved the men back a step with the fury of his response. The pain that shot through his chest told him that he would not be pressing distance again. Yelling erupted around him, as the men called for aid, an arrow hissed past his ear, and the useless lizard screamed his rage and pain. Nazir was hurting too. Hurting as if he’d ridden all day, then jumped off a cliff, then been covered head to toe with corrosive acid, sliced and slashed to within an inch of his life, and dragged over hard ground. And these were no fresh recruits; these were real soldiers, and in this state they were fully capable of killing him in three moves or less. He didn’t have time to shepherd someone who didn’t have the sense to save his own skin. “Run!” he snapped, when the Argonian paused for a ragged breath. “Run, you fool!”

As the soldiers maneuvered to flank him, Nazir turned and followed his own advice, gritting his teeth against the pain and trailing the lizard’s racing footsteps into the brush and the too-cold night of a countryside he knew nothing about.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

The Argonian was past the point of shivering when Nazir lowered him, britches and all, into the water. He himself kept dry, but hunched over the warmth wafting from the dark pool. It was something he had heard of, but never thought he would see: the natural hot springs of Skyrim and Morrowind. Now he cared only for the warmth and the end of the longest night of his life.

“Ahhh,” the Argonian moaned, his queer lizard’s eyes blinking back to life. But as his blood warmed, so too did his memory. His hands let go of the lip of the pool, and only Nazir’s quick grab of a horn kept his head from slipping under the water. “Let me float,” he hissed softly. “Let me go.”

“Why would the Stormcloaks kill them? Was it for the ore?”

“No. They needed us, to dig. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Don’t you want to know?”

“I don’t care. Knowing doesn’t bring back the dead. Revenge doesn’t bring back the dead. Dead is dead.”

Nazir held the Argonian’s head above the water and knew that for every man, every woman he had killed—and there were more than he could count—he had left in his wake countless more, children and lovers and family and friends, in this half-death of mourning. How many more lives had he not yet touched?

“Would they have killed the child?”

Water lapped at rock as he stirred himself. “Hrefna. Maybe not. They are monsters—to slaughter a town—but maybe not Hrefna. She would have been sent to Riften, to the orphanage.”

“Until you know that she is dead,” Nazir thought of the lady Suda, “there is still hope, and you must live.”

The Argonian took hold of the lip of the pool, lifting himself head and narrow shoulders out of the water. The faint pink light of dawn gleamed surreal on his wet scales. “You have saved my life, Nazir of Hammerfell. Twice, now, you have saved my life. I am sorry that it has turned out to be such a worthless thing to save.”

“If that child lives, you are all that she has left. You are a brave loyal man, who would make a good father.” Nazir thought of his own father, of the way he’d last seen him. Flesh and blood, like any other man. “A good father is a rare and precious thing to save.”

“Will you come with me to Riften? I would like her to meet you. I don’t know how to thank you, how to repay you, but I will find a way.” He hesitated. “We have a saying, in the Jel language of the Hist. About the warm-blood who gives the heat of life to one of the saxhleel. It is difficult to translate. It says that you have one of our souls, that you too come from the Hist— but that is not quite right. It says that you are not made of the stranger.”

Nazir considered this. Considered that he could say yes, that he could go to this strange city with this strange man-lizard. Considered that, instead, he could wander the countryside looking for a woman he was not going to find. A woman he wasn’t even sure anymore that he wanted to find. “Take my hand,” he extended.

“Why?”

“Just take my hand.” The Argonian did, and Nazir felt the warmth of his soft slick skin. Different, yet the same, as the skin of a man. “Because earlier today, someone refused to believe I could be anything but an assassin. I have never been anything else. But now, I will try. I will go with you to Riften, and I will try.”


	7. The Dragonborn Comes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If it was Ulfric Stormcloak’s lot to fly and fall, better that it be from a place so high that no man had ever reached it. Ulfric visits High Hrothgar. Decisions are made regarding Whiterun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: discussion of rape in second-to-last section, intended to be disturbing but not graphic.
> 
> Before or after this chapter would be an appropriate time to read this sidestory: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1821106

Chapter Seven: The Dragonborn Comes

22nd Last Seed, 4E 201.

High Hrothgar. The keep’s tower thrust up into an ice-clear afternoon sky, small uneven windows squinting like a beast with many eyes. Double tongues of steep stairs reached for the weary pilgrim.

At the foot of those stairs, Ulfric peeled the glove from his hand and ran his fingers over the lockless latch of the offering-chest. To each man who made the pilgrimage the Greybeards would make one gift of knowledge, no matter whether he was a vagrant offering a chipped stone or a king offering years of rich tithing. Once upon a time it had been Ulfric’s task to pry up this lid, watching a small figure or party plod back down the mountain, and see what they had left. Now he opened it as the richest sort of pilgrim. Into the empty chest he placed dry-sealed parchments, the pledges and schedules for transport of goods from Windhelm, provisional capital of a free Skyrim. The High King climbed the last steps of his journey, brushed snow from the fur of his cloak, straightened his crown of dragons’ teeth and shoved a shoulder against the narrow iron door.

The smell of the place was a memory he didn’t know he had. Torch oil and the slow smoldering of dried herbs. Ulfric paused to let his eyes adjust to the way the low braziers and banks of candles did more to make the walls crawl with serpentine relief than to light the cavernous room. Behind him, the heavy door crashed back into place and suddenly choked off the whistling wind. Ulfric’s breath was too loud in this stillness of stone. He cleared his throat, advanced to the center of the great hall, and felt something restless stir beneath his breastbone. He wanted to hear how his voice would reverberate from these walls, how it would breach the sanctity of this silence and fill this space with his presence.

“I am Ulfric Stormcloak,” he called into the void. “Jarl of Windhelm, High King of Skyrim by the old laws.” It would not do to exaggerate, not here. “I come in pilgrimage to seek the wisdom of High Hrothgar. I come to answer your summons.”

They filtered in from other parts of the fortress, and Ulfric recognized each by the way he moved. Four, where thirty years ago there had been five masters and one young apprentice. The eldest of them stepped into the light of a brazier and if he was more stooped, if his eyes shone from deeper pits, surely it was not that Arngeir had aged. He stood there, gathering up a tangible gravitas. When at last he spoke, his pale knotted beard wagged beneath his hood. His voice was soft and scratched with disuse. “I am Arngeir. The voice of High Hrothgar.”

“I know who you are. Do you not recognize me?”

His eyes remained hooded. “No.”

“Do you not acknowledge me?”

“No.”

“Did you not summon me?”

“ _Doh-vah-kin_ , we summoned. Dragonborn.”

Ulfric had no patience for the games a master played with his pupil. “Dragons have returned to the world, and I have slain one. I felt its power as it entered me, a restless hunger in my soul. I felt it wake a dragon-wall, and knowledge I did not understand seized my mind. You know well that I have the gift of the Voice. So speak. Am I not the Dragonborn?”

Arngeir indulged his penchant for long pauses, letting echoes fade off of the old carved walls. When he replied into the silence, it was with the words he’d said to a thousand other pilgrims, mighty and meek alike. “To each child born of wind and winter is given one pilgrimage to High Hrothgar. One pilgrimage, and one answer. We offer not the foresight of seers, nor the hindsight of historians. We offer wisdom that is timeless.” His keen eyes shifted across Ulfric and his trappings of power. “Are you the same man as the boy we took to training, as the young man who forsook peace for war? That man has already taken his pilgrimage, and we gave to him all the wisdom that is ours to give. What he forsook, we do not offer again, for words are precious. And,” he raised a hand against Ulfric’s response, “if you are _not_ that man, that boy we prepared against greatness, then you are not the Dragonborn that Skyrim seeks.”

_A long-haired barefoot boy lowered his head beneath Arngeir’s steely gaze. A puzzle, a conundrum to turn over in his mind. What is a man? From the soft weakness of an infant to the hale health of youth to the brittleness of age, he is said to be the same. From his milk-name to his battle-name to his clan-name, he is said to be the same. From innocent play to hopeful passion to bitter knowledge, he is said to be the same…_

Ulfric stood clad in armor he had worn to kill countrymen, armor that had turned swords from his chest. He wore the cloak that rallied a revolution, and his neck strained beneath the unfamiliar weight of a dead legend’s crown. He was no student, not anymore. “You would have taught me strength without pain. Duty without love. You would have taught me to understand goodness without the struggle of wanting it. The world you forsake has taught me a wisdom beyond your philosophy.”

Arngeir spared a glance for his companions, and gathered himself with a small sad shake of his head. “Pain. We would have taught the Dragonborn to be free of pain, so that he would not stand before us as a man twisted by—

**FAAS**

**RU**

**MAAR**

 

 

 

 

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

21st Last Seed. _Yesterday._

Evening cast long orange light across the mountains. Ulfric came across the first horse, stripped of tack, as he climbed the highest ascent to overlook the Darkwater River. Not long after, near a cliffside, he found a second horse tied with a long lead. Ulfric checked that his sword was loose in its sheath, that the clasps holding his axe to the saddle were within easy reach. Horses were not so cheap that they would be left by the wayside. Their owners would be nearby, or else whoever had killed their owners. The climb down to the stony river-fording would be a good place for an attack in the gathering dusk. But why leave the horses in plain sight? It was a warning, he decided, crossing the river to the main path to Ivarstead and seeing no sign of ambush. A warning from a foe who preferred that he know he was being watched.

A subtle shadow moved above a rocky outcropping. Ulfric hefted his shield, expecting the hiss of an arrow.

“Shhh,” came a low, red-velvet voice. “It does not see you. Move soft.” She spoke with the throaty, clipped accent of a cat. Ulfric kept his hand on his hilt as he glanced where she pointed.

Upriver from them, under a dark overhang, a boulder that was not a boulder shifted, snorted and stretched out one disproportionately long arm to lie more comfortably on the ground. A boulder with massive slabs of muscle beneath thick skin sparsely sprouting with hair. The wind shifted off the river, and suddenly Ulfric could smell the rotting-meat stench of the troll’s lair. His mountain gelding, no war-horse, tossed its head and showed the whites of its eyes.

“Up here,” the cat whispered. “There is a way around. I show you. Walk scared horse, or leave it.”

Ulfric dismounted carefully, his eyes still scanning the rocks and crevices where half a dozen of the wily cat’s friends might be hiding. He had slain trolls before, though not alone. If this one had taken up residence on the road to Ivarstead, it would have to be killed. But this was not a fight to undertake lightly. He did not like the look of the terrain, of the narrow stretch of ground bordered by slippery-wet stones and a fast current. This was a fight for daytime, without a she-cat or a whole caravan taking aim at his back. He took the reins and ran a hand over the horse’s nose, letting it smell his hand for a moment rather than the troll.

“ _Come._ ”

He eased his sword from its sheath and kept it in hand as he lead the horse by his shield-laden left arm. Once he’d joined her atop the fall of rocks, he saw that no others lay with her in wait. The two of them crept over grass and stone above the troll’s lair, and Ulfric was pleased that the little mountain horse was either smart enough or frightened enough to follow quietly.

Once they were on the path far upriver, the cat turned to look at him. She had a long narrow muzzle and yellow eyes that seemed to glow faintly with the new-risen light of the small pale moon. Half her face was hidden, not by shadow, but by the black calico marking of her fur. She wore peddler’s clothes, a white blouse under a loosely laced corset and well-pocketed skirt. “Many travelers coming to Ivarstead,” she started conversationally. “Many travelers to buy Shavari’s wares, and to be grateful of warning about troll. What is your name, traveler?”

“Not any of your business,” Ulfric rumbled, “unless your caravan can hire my arm.”

Her black lips twitched a smile. “Of course,” she purred. “Such a strong arm. But Shavari has no caravan and no need for sellsword. Shavari makes her own way in the world.”

“Why are there so many travelers in Ivarstead?” he asked, although he could already guess the answer.

“Did you not hear the call? The old men of the mountain, they have called for the dragon-man. They say, in the inn, the call is for Ulfric Stormcloak.” Moonlight glinted on her tiny pointed teeth. “The one true King of Skyrim. So, so, peasants and pilgrims gather to see him start up the many many steps. They share much talk and much drink, in the tavern, as if every day is a festival-day. It is so easy to tell apart the one dark-haired man who listens more than he talks.” She winked. “He is not very clever. But then, his people have been kept very busy. Perhaps they can be forgiven for an amateur.”

Ulfric’s fingers worked up and down the wire of his grip. In one moment of sudden decision, he dropped the reins and swung hard. She ducked and danced back, sure-footed.

“That is not very kind of you.” The words came from deep in her chest, as if she caressed them all the way up into her throat. “Not very kind to peasants, are you?”

Before he could launch himself in another charge, she melted away into a grove of trees. He heard a brief scrabble of boots on stone, then nothing.

Ulfric stood alone in the night, his breath too fast, his heart too loud.

And Galmar was always saying that he imagined spies where there were none.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

Ulfric stood at the center, a master of the Voice in each circle etched in the stone around him. A lesson? A test?

Arngeir’s soft rasp came from behind him. “Pain leads to fear, and fear controls you.”

The surge through his blood was battle-instinct. It made his senses sharp, made him know the distance to each old man, made him hear the whisper of fabric against stone, identify the sharp notes of juniper and lavender in the brazier-smoke.

“Love. We would have taught the Dragonborn to be free of love, so that he would not stand before us as a man haunted by—

**AUS**

**MIR**

**MEY**

 

 

 

 

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

There were lights and music pouring from the windows of the tavern in the little unwalled village of Ivarstead. But Ulfric had a different destination in mind. He dismounted at the first farmhouse on the left, tied his horse to the post, and rapped at the door.

The farmer who cracked opened the door was broad-shouldered, and the light from the fireplace showed his hair and short beard to be most of the way to grey. “Wrong door,” he said to the armored man standing outside his home. “Inn’s down th’street.”

Ulfric took off the helm that obscured his face. “Jofthor?” The man started at the sound of his voice. “Does Boti still live here?”

She craned into view. Boti. Her hair was silver, her face harder, but somehow still free from the worst of age-lines. As beautiful as ever. Her mouth dropped open and she rushed forward to put a hand on the farmer’s shoulder, staring at her visitor. “Nine Divines, it’s _you_. Come in,” she shook Jofthor’s reluctant arm until he dropped it from the door-frame. “It’s _Ulfric_.”

Jofthor stepped aside, scrutinizing his face. “ _Talos_ , you’ve changed. Where’s the scrawny boy who came down from that mountain?”

“He’s the High King now,” Boti fussed with the table. “Here, sit down, please. We were about to have a soup… that is, if…”

“For tonight,” Ulfric murmured, “let me not be the High King, nor the Dragonborn. Let me be an old friend, who should have come to visit long ago.”

Her hands froze while setting down the third bowl. She turned, then, and threw her arms around his neck. His hands found her back, her narrow waist. “Oh, Ulfric. I thought—” she couldn’t finish.

“You never came back.” It wasn’t quite an accusation. “We heard you were a hero, then we heard you went to Markarth. Later, it was that you were the Jarl in Windhelm.” Jofthor shrugged. “We thought, well, heroes and Jarls, they don’t have time much for farmers.”

“I should have made time.” He said it mostly to Boti. “I am sorry. So much happened, during the war, after the war. I am so far from the boy you once knew. But—” he squeezed her hand— “I remember, what it felt like to be him. I should have made time, after returning to Windhelm.”

Boti still gripped his hand, took Jofthor’s and sat them all down at the table. Ulfric looked around at the small house, the comfortable mess of barrels and bottles and dried herbs. The double bed and the single one crammed into a corner. “You’re married,” he realized with a start. Of course, it should have been obvious. “And you have a child?”

“Hardly. She’s twenty-four now,” Jofthor said. “Fastred. She’d have us think she’s all grown up and ready to fly the nest for good. She’s been spending every evening in the tavern, listening to the wild tales of strangers.”

“Twenty-four…”

“We heard about your wedding,” Boti said. “They said it was second only to the wedding of High King Istlod.” She looked down. “She must be very beautiful. Has she given you children?”

“I lost my wife many years ago,” Ulfric said. “No children. Let’s talk of something else.”

Color rose in Boti’s cheeks. “Of course. I’m sorry.” She ladled soup into their bowls, and they talked of the good harvest, the poor lumber trade, the high crop-taxes to Riften that were—fortunately—the only effect of the war they’d felt. Any young men and women inclined to fighting and adventure left as soon as they were of age, war or no war. They talked of the troll by the road. They talked of rumors, of a haunting in the barrow. Of the story that Jurgen Windcaller’s tomb had been found way out in the eastern marshes. After soup, Ulfric excused himself to brush down his horse. He returned to Jofthor griping about how his daughter talked of running off with some red-headed trader with an Imperial father when Klimmek was a perfectly good hardworking Nord fisherman right here in Ivarstead. Boti just murmured that sometimes a girl’s heart yearns for more than a little town.

“Klimmek’s the one who’s taken over the deliveries for me,” Jofthor remarked to Ulfric. And then they were off remembering a host of tales about a young man who climbed the seven thousand steps each month, and the silent solemn boy who took the crates from him, and the unlikely friendship they’d struck up by passing letters.

“You were a godsend, Jofthor,” Ulfric remembered. Boti was clearing away the bowls and pouring wine and slicing up a sweetroll. “If it weren’t for you, I would have known nothing of the world outside High Hrothgar. I might never have come down. I have to admit, the thought of returning there, after all this time… is strange.”

“Most of the High Kings pass through here, soon after taking up the throne,” Jofthor remarked.

“Torygg never did.”

They had nothing to say to that.

“He was so young. Not much older than your daughter.”

“But he refused to step down?” Boti asked softly.

“He refused to step down. But he did not refuse the challenge. He was man enough for that.”

“I can scarcely imagine your life,” she murmured. “Tell us about Windhelm. About Solitude. About all the grand places you’ve been.”

He shook his head. “Those tales would take much more time than we have tonight. When I return, we’ll spend a day together.”

She smiled at that. Talk turned to the climb, to whether he had supplies, to how early he would start up. There would be no way to do it quietly; the rabble had taken to posting a watch on the steps to raise a cry when the High King was spotted, even in the dead of night. “My enemies have spies among the crowd,” he muttered darkly. “They must be delighted by all this unwitting aid.”

“Do you think the Imperials will try to capture you? To follow you up?” Boti worried.

“If any enemy of Skyrim shows his face tomorrow morning, we will stone him til he cannot stand, and we will tear him apart,” Jofthor assured. “This little town is with you, Ulfric. We remember where you came from. On the day the news came from Solitude, there was revelry on the street. Old Wilhelm says it well: you may have been born in a palace, but you’re a High King from Ivarstead all the same.”

“A large, armed party cannot climb the seven thousand steps. If a few men follow me, I will throw them from the cliffs.”

So it was decided. He would leave in the plain light of day, and give the crowd the show they craved.

Jofthor started to grumble about how late Fastred was staying out, and Boti quickly volunteered to fetch her, no doubt to save the grown woman from the embarrassment of being dragged home by her father. Ulfric and Jofthor were left at the suddenly quiet table. His host stood and cleared the wine-goblets into the bucket of washwater.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not turning around. “I know you fancied each other. But years went by…”

“I didn’t come back. I didn’t do right by her. You did. You seem happy together.”

“We are. It’s just… she wanted so much more than a simple hardworking man in Ivarstead could give her. When you come back down… have your day together, Ulfric. With my blessing. But please, I don’t want my wife to leave me, to leave our daughter. Even if it is for a High King.”

“Jofthor. You’ve misunderstood. I was seventeen. We knew each other for two weeks; she was the first woman I’d seen as such. I thought I loved her, before I learned what love was. I am not taking her away from you. I am leading a war, for Talos’ sake. I have no room in my life for a woman.”

“Then tell her that. Here in Ivarstead, there’s not a whole lot to our lives, so I guess we don’t tend to forget much. She fell in love with you when you were a bookish boy with— well, with this sort of ageless loneliness about you. She heard you became a war hero, and she waited for you to come back. She heard you were a liberator, and she waited for you to come back. She heard you were a Jarl, and she waited for you to come back. You think she’ll let you go, now that you’re a King?”

“If she’s infatuated with something, she’s infatuated with an idea, a dream. Not with me. I have nothing to do with it.”

Footsteps outside the door cut off the reply gathering on Jofthor’s brows. Fastred was a comely girl with long brown hair, her mother’s eyes, and a bit too much of her father’s jaw and nose to be called a great beauty. She was blushing and tongue-tied before the High King, but Boti quickly ushered everyone into bed in preparation for an early start. Ulfric was given the daughter’s cot while she squeezed in with her parents.

He lay in the bed that smelled like a girl, Boti’s daughter, older now than Boti had been when a teenaged boy had climbed down from High Hrothgar and beheld his pen-pal’s childhood friend. The woman who’d seemed, at the time, ethereally beautiful, mature and worldly, painfully desirable. He would have forsaken his resolve to go to war if she had not pushed him out into the world, holding desperately to promises that he would return for her after the war and take her away. Promises as easily forgotten as the sound of the waterfall lulling the little town to sleep each night. Easily forgotten when the tumult outside this safe haven carried him away in its undertow.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

Ulfric’s hand had found his hilt, but this battle was not one to be fought with blades. “Enough! I didn’t come here to—”

“Love leads to guilt, and guilt controls you,” Arngeir croaked.

Ulfric spun to face him. The pressure in his chest was the sorrow of lifetimes lost, and not just the one with Boti. His throat swelled with it, a need to lash out. “Wrong,” he growled. “Love leads to anger.”

The old man lifted his chin, stood his ground. “We would have taught the Dragonborn to know only the goodness of peace without wanting, so that he would not stand before us as a man consumed by—”

“FUS!”

Ulfric’s Voice caught Arngeir square in the chest, sent him flying into the wall while the others staggered to keep their feet.

Though his breath came ragged and fast, Ulfric rode the crest of control that came in the wake of his outburst. “Consumed by what?” he spat. “Power? Desire, lust, _hunger_ to fight and take and own and rule? Pride, the knowledge that whatever I want is within my reach to conquer? I carry the soul of a _dragon_ now.” He could nearly laugh. “ _One_ soul. Put that in a man who has known no inner battle—your peaceful dragonborn—and it would burn him alive.”

Arngeir raised himself slowly from the floor, but Ulfric continued rather than let him retake control of the debate. “You would have a dragonborn who is like you, sequestered from the world and uncaring of it. But a dragonborn _cannot_ be like you. I commit the sins of both man and dragon—I am the living passion to shape the world according to my will and my power. That is what a dragonborn must be. That is what he is. Will you aid me, or not?”

The old man retook his place in the circle, favoring his side, wheezing. “The Dragonborn must have the passion to shape the world, to oppose that which would unshape it. But not all shapes of the world are worth saving. Many dragonborn before you have fallen to the arrogance of power and brought horror and tyranny to this world.” He drew himself up, and let Ulfric see his wince. “So long as you crown yourself with their hubris, we will not aid you. Jurgen Windcaller was the greatest of the dragonborn. Word has reached us that his hidden tomb is found in the ruins of Ustengrav. Trade your crown for his horn, for only then will we aid you.”

“We have no time for this. You may not have noticed, but Skyrim lies divided in civil war. Morthal is held by the Imperial Legion, I cannot reach it.”

“War and pride prevent you from seeking the horn of Jurgen Windcaller. How appropriate. Until you set these aside, I have no more words for you.”

Ulfric spent the evening wandering the place, touching the furniture, flipping through the pages of books he knew so well. Adding wood to the hearth. Pacing circles in the courtyard before the maelstrom gates he could not pass. Atop the tower at sundown, he meditated on the heady vertigo that sometimes compels men to drop objects from high places, just to watch them tumble down and vanish. Or even to throw themselves over the edge, just to feel what it would be like to fly. But if it was Ulfric Stormcloak’s lot to fly and fall, better that it be from a place so high that no man had ever reached it.

He slept in a bed that was now too small. The morning’s brooding trek down the mountain was far quicker than the climb, and graced by the sight of Skyrim unfolding beneath him. Toy houses, toy people hard at harvest in the wheat-fields. Like pieces on a battle-map. Before he reached the bridge to Ivarstead he found Boti waiting, laden down with blanket and basket and girlish smile.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

Windhelm, 24th Last Seed, 4E 201.

The hearthfire and the castle’s drafts wafted warm and cool over bare skin. Galmar poured a drop of hot oil first onto his palm, then a thin stream directly onto the broad muscle-slabbed back spread beneath him. With large blunt hands he slowly worked his way up the tight ropes on either side of Ulfric’s spine, and waited for him to continue the story.

“I made love to her, then, with the remnants of our meal strewn about and only a thin blanket between us and the cave’s pine-dirt floor. She was a spectre out of the past, but still I made love to her.”

Galmar thought of sharp firelight on sharp features. A spectre out of the past. _I didn’t. Did I want to?_ Sometimes the touch of skin spoke a language that halting words could not reach.

“I never had, you know. With her. You remember me when we were training at Neugrad—naive and unspoilt. I suppose there was something of a farewell in the act, a farewell to the boy I was the last time I came down that mountain.” Ulfric shifted, and Galmar’s thumbs pressed at the base of his neck to still him. “That’s not what it was for her. She didn’t want that boy, she wanted a warrior. A king, a conqueror out of song.” His breath caught as Galmar drove his knuckle into a tender chink, pressed and released. “She had such a safe and good life, and it still wasn’t enough for her.”

Ulfric turned his head so that he was muffled in the furs of the bed. Galmar let him retreat, working at his shoulders, then sat up on his knees and pulled Ulfric around to lie on his back.

There he was, the entirety of him. From hooded grey eyes down his prominent nose, past strong jaw washed over by an untrimmed beard, to a chest crisscrossed by old scars and gristle. There he was, all the way down to where they lay together at half-mast. This was the man who was the greatest hope, and the greatest obstacle, to the future of his country. Ulfric looked up at him, clear and solemn, and a lifetime hung between them.

“I hurt her in the end,” Ulfric confessed. “She wanted a conqueror, but she believed in a world where the strong are good. Where battle is about honor, and rutting is about love. But that’s not what the world is really like, I told her.”

“What is the world really like?” It was one of those moments where, hanging there above him, Galmar had no idea how Ulfric would reply.

Ulfric’s voice was low and deep. “It’s rough, painful, and you’re not in control.”

So that’s what this was about. He tried to bring Ulfric back from those cobwebs of the past. “Always?”

He reached up, ran fingers over Galmar’s wire-bearded, weather-beaten face. “No, not always.” His other hand trailed along the thigh that straddled him.

“Ulfric. You hurt that woman.”

His hands kept tracing across skin, his eyes roving and hungry. “Yes, I know,” he murmured, distracted.

Galmar caught Ulfric’s wandering hand and pinned it to the bed. “You brought that unto her, Ulfric!” Suddenly he got up, sat on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees, feet on cold flagstone. He stared at the wall, at shelves and books. The furs rustled as Ulfric propped himself up on the headboard. Galmar’s back tensed, expecting a touch and some mumbled contrition, as if that would make any difference.

Instead, Ulfric went on, a low rumble. “I stopped. She’d cried out. I didn’t want to hurt her, I just wanted her not to…”

“Do you think you are a good king, Ulfric?”

The was a long pause behind him. “I have to be,” he said at last, quietly. “Galmar, help me. Tell me how to be a good king.”

He forced himself to unball his fists, to straighten and turn back towards the bed. It was all too much, all too much to do alone. “The war keeps you from the horn of Jurgen Windcaller, and the guidance of the Greybeards. Let’s open talks with Solitude, compromise on a regent, appoint loyal men to Elisif’s court. Let’s end this war, Ulfric, at least while we are fighting dragons.”

Ulfric’s face pinched as he met his eyes. “And why is it that we need the guidance of the Greybeards?” he asked softly. “We have seen that dragons are killed with hard steel, not with philosophy. We have seen that they know as little about being dragonborn as they know about being worldly men. The bards do not sing of Greybeards atop their mountain—the old song says that I will be _an end to the evil of all Skyrim’s foes._ Does your prophesy say any different?”

“You know I do not have the words.”

“Are we not agreed that Imperial misrule is a foe to Skyrim?”

“Ulfric—”

“I will not be sent on errands, I have no need to prove my worth to old men who indoctrinate children, and I do not need their validation to hold the heart of the people.”

“Fine, Ulfric. Fine. I only meant that they know more about dragons and dragonborn than nearly anyone.”

A small smile quirked at the corner of Ulfric’s broad mouth. “I do believe I have the best master of information in all of Skyrim. If there is something to be known, you will find it.”

“But this isn’t about the approval of the Greybeards. We cannot ride across the country fighting dragons if half the country is up in arms against us. Men cannot defend their homes if they are in the field under our banner. Winter is coming, and both sides will be ripe for a reprieve. While Whiterun remains neutral, Balgruuf would gladly mediate a truce.”

Instantly, Ulfric’s face darkened. “So, Balgruuf has finally deigned a reply. Mediate? The man has been playing both sides ever since he voted against me at the moot. The only message I’ll accept from him is his pledge of fealty.” He snorted. “Fine, what did he write?”

Galmar hesitated, composing his thoughts. But Ulfric’s eyes followed his to the side of the room, to where an unfamiliar axe lay propped against the wall.

“He sent me his axe.” Ulfric’s shoulders slumped. “Somehow, I didn’t want to believe it would come to this. Even after all he has said to me, even after he _conspired_ against me in Solitude.” He shook his head. “I should have known that in the end he would be a traitor to Skyrim. Still, this one, it feels personal.”

Galmar swallowed down words unsaid, touched that centered confidence of a diplomat— _a liar, a spymaster_ —that felt so unnatural to use with Ulfric. “Balgruuf says he refuses to allow the Imperial Legion access to his city. He claims to hold three hundred hillmen against their approach. But he refuses you as well. He will defend Whiterun against any who would take her.” He nodded to the axe. “He says that should you bring him back his axe, you are attacking his city, not the Legion. And he recognizes you as his battle-brother, not his enemy. Should it come to war, he proposes these terms, as kinsmen: That fallen men be left to the healers. That either side’s surrender shall be honored, and none shall be harmed nor held. If we should surrender, we shall be free to go. If he should surrender, he shall remain Jarl and swear to you his fealty.”

Ulfric’s voice was unaccountably rough with feeling. “He does keep to the old ways after all. He will only bend the knee to a king who is strong enough to win him.”

 _Balgruuf knew what this would look like to him,_ Galmar realized. “That’s not all. I’ve had intelligence from the south. The Second, Third and Sixth legions are gathering at the Pale Pass. If we move for Falkreath, Titus Mede will fight us for it, tooth and claw. The way forward lies through Whiterun, Ulfric, one way or another. But will it be battle, or will you sit down at Balgruuf’s peace table?”

“If we hold Whiterun and her harvest, it will be a lean winter in Solitude. Months will go by, Falkreath will buck under the occupation of three legions, we will rule five holds from Windhelm. Let them call a moot—with Balgruuf, we will win it. But I think the people will rise up and Solitude will surrender before spring.”

“Ulfric, _think_. What about the dragons?”

“There was something Arngeir said that remains in my mind— _not all shapes of the world are worth saving._ I may be destined to save the world, but that is not enough, is it? I must also ensure that it is a world worth saving. A place with more justice and joy than oppression and horror. I am the Dragonborn. I think I have the power to do both. I have to try. For Skyrim, I have to try.” His eyes creased. His hand reached out and found Galmar’s. “But I know, and you know, that I cannot do it without you. If you tell me that I am misguided, if you tell me that I must treat with our enemies even when victory is near, I will heed you and do as you say. But tell me here, Galmar, are you with me?”

Galmar grasped his friend’s hand, a callous unsubtle hand. He searched those sheer blue eyes and knew they held refreshing guilelessness in a world of shadows and whispers. For Ulfric words and passions were as effortless as breathing; in the moment that he spoke them he believed them absolutely, and the next day they might be forgotten. Galmar also knew that this hand had slain innocence, and that these eyes had look on horror that men did not come back from whole. And he knew that there was only one answer on his lips, because he himself was too far gone to do this alone. “Always.”

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

Long after Ulfric was asleep, Galmar sat at his own writing desk, the King’s correspondence spilling onto the floor, fresh-sealed parchments piled in a basket by the door. It would take weeks to resupply an army after the losses at Haemar’s Pass, to pull the troops from the south, to rotate leave and training in Windhelm to prevent desertions. There were the increasingly terse letters to Korir in Winterhold, and the ones to the College itself, trying to rouse up some battlemages to counter the Legion’s advantage. There was the first coded report from Wuunferth praising Jarl Laila’s hospitality and vintages of jazby wine, but really speaking of salacious affairs, noble families approaching open revolt, and altogether too much about poisons. And then there was the letter from Avulstein Gray-Mane in Whiterun, and that one was different.

Galmar put his quill back in its inkpot, pushed the empty parchment of his reply aside, and took up the letter again. Proclamations of loyalty aside, talk of Whiterun’s history and passionate denigrations of some rival family aside, the letter ended simply and bluntly. _Give me the word, my King, and for the glory of my clan and all of Skyrim, the gates of Whiterun will open for you. When my uncle sits the Jarl’s throne, Whiterun will be your greatest asset._

A man inside, a nearly bloodless battle at the gates, a fast charge to Dragonsreach, and a clean coup would take Balgruuf’s beloved city and stage Ulfric for a cautious winter or a push westward. Ulfric didn’t like duplicity. But then, Ulfric didn’t like keeping up with letters either. Both were essential to holding a realm together, and that’s why both were Galmar’s job. What Ulfric liked was victory. Men died beneath besieged walls, with arrows and boiling oil raining down on them. Men died, friends died, even commanders died. How many deaths were worth the price of one man’s conscience? How lives saved were worth a Whiterun, a Skyrim without Balgruuf the great mediator?

Galmar picked up the quill. He’d said something, back there, and now in the quiet weariness of night he wondered just how true it was. _If we should fail and turn back from the gates of Whiterun, forcing Ulfric to the negotiating table, it would not be a bad thing. Still, I will do nothing—_

He was too exhausted to be making these decisions, he told himself. Still, he scribed his reply, pressed the seal into it, and tossed it onto the pile.


	8. Lie Down and Bleed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The very long night of Brelyna Maryon.

Chapter 8: Lie Down and Bleed

Brelyna Maryon, daughter of House Telvanni, apprentice to the College of Winterhold, lay in the darkest part of the night beneath the walls of Whiterun with a dagger in her belly and swift poison spreading through her blood. The assassin’s fingers pressed into the side of her neck as the beat of her heart fluttered, slowed, and stopped.

Her last thoughts were of…

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

College of Winterhold, 15th Midyear, 4E 201. _Two months ago._

Onmund sat with her, cross-legged on the folded sheet on the floor, their knees touching. With her eyes closed, her breathing a steady ebb and flow of light through her body, Brelyna was barely aware of the added warmth of his hand on hers, turning her forearm. Thin pressure added a second warmth, but in the floating blue realm of her mind there was no pain. Only a prickle of loss, a trickle of light flowing out of her.

She did not try to fight, this time. The time for fighting was over. Weariness was her new shell, a thin membrane wrapping her tight, cutting off the flow of loss, trapping a pale core at the heart of her where she was strongest. And she found she could nudge that light, send its tendrils wrapping and writhing to her arm.

She did not have to open her eyes to see what was happening, but she did anyway, still floating distant and detached. The white gleam of bone swiftly disappeared as muscle knitted back over, as severed channels filled once again with blood, as the layers of her grey-dark skin pinched together and closed without a pucker. She held still, the itch of other things still swarming beneath the skin. She did not have to know what hundreds of small adjustments the magic made; her body, so recently whole, knew the template of its form.

The peace of that place was fading, now, and Brelyna struggled to hold to it just a little longer. But it was in the struggle, of course, that the peace was lost. Wasn’t that what she had just realized today?

Onmund caught her shoulder as she slumped, her left hand flexing, testing, her right probing. She caught sight of the knife, the sheet. “Oh,” she breathed. “That’s a lot of blood…”

“You did it!” He pressed a vial into her hand. The fragrant, earthy elixir tasted like the most vital thing she had ever drunk, and soon she did not feel like heaving anymore. She grinned in victory. “Next up, though,” his eyes were serious, “healing in combat.”

Brelyna stretched, stood. “Please. To practice that, you’ll first have to be able to _hit_ me in a duel.”

“I’m not the one you have to worry about. J’zargo can get through your armor.”

She sighed. “I’m not going to make more progress before tomorrow. I did… it did feel different, this time. I think I learned something.”

“Good! I wish I was a better teacher. You’re just… so different.” He looked away. “The way you think about magic. But,” he gestured at her arm, “you got it, on your own, and boy, it looks better than anything I ever did. Raw talent goes a long way.”

“Master Tolfdir says that to understand healing magic, you have to have a deep grasp of mortality.” She shrugged. “And mer just don’t have that hanging over our heads.”

“Makes you wonder about Master Colette, eh? What does she know about death and killing?”

They laughed. “Hard to imagine her lying awake at night, counting the years,” Brelyna agreed. But, now that she thought about the young, overeager, high-strung Master Healer, it was not that hard to imagine. “Or, well… no matter. It’s your turn for a lesson now. I would still love to see you kick that kitty’s furry ass tomorrow.”

They bundled the blood-soaked sheet and Brelyna reduced it to charred shreds with an effortless flick of her wrist. Since fighting was forbidden in the dorms, they moved their practice to the large circular Hall of the Elements. The room where, tomorrow, the three apprentices would face off in the summer duels. Brelyna pelted the young Nord with glowing balls that stuck to his robes when he failed to deflect them with his crackling disk of a shield. “Burned arm. Burned leg. Burned face. Dead, dead, dead.” But he was moving well, anticipating her aim from the angle of her body, keeping his right hand free. “Ok, time to add in your flames.” She called up her own armor with a brief sizzle of distressed air, an invisible crisscross of power that settled just over her skin and clothes. It was what Onmund had been working on recently, firing around his shield.

Two apprentices battled round and round the Hall while, in the recess of the grand double doors, the Archmage and the Master Wizard watched.

“I don’t want to lose another one,” Mirabelle Ervine whispered.

Sometimes, talking to the Archmage was like talking to stone.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

The three apprentices paced before the closed grate to the Hall of the Elements. J’zargo’s tail was twitching and lashing the way it had in the depths of Saarthal, when they’d all taken a moment’s breath before opening the next set of doors to face yet another room full of walking dead.

“It is only fair to tell you what J’zargo has learned,” he blurted out suddenly. “J’zargo heard from Nirya, and Nirya heard from Sergius, and Sergius overheard Master Faralda speaking to Master Mirabelle. It is Orthorn, he who stole from the library, yes? The Masters are hunting him. It is the prize, for the summer-duel. An early _practicum_ , to go on this hunt.” He grinned his wide, shallow grin, whiskers twitching. “I will make adept in less than three years! It is unheard of since the great Krex!”

“The _mad_ Krex,” Onmund muttered.

Enthir and Nirya swept in, bringing a flurry of snowflakes from the courtyard. The adepts were a pair of tall stately mer in their starched, pressed yellow robes thick with enchantments. “You don’t want to be another Krex,” the Bosmer said. “Or another Malyn, another Wylandriah. The College has had its fill of brilliant, mad wizards.”

Nirya arched a perfect eyebrow. “Let’s just go for brilliant, shall we?”

The inner doors swung open with the crackle of a spell released. Inside the Hall, the Masters stood arrayed at the five points of a pentagon. Master Alterer Tolfdir, along with the third adept, were still working in the ruins of Saarthal, working to find out more about the Orb that the apprentices’ year-end practicum had uncovered. Mirabelle Ervine, the Master Wizard, stood in his place, leaving only Archmage Aren to wander freely during the duels. Behind the line of the pillars, where they could safely duck for cover, observers were permitted to gather. The three apprentices stood there, waiting their turn. So did a small host of craftsmen and servants who kept the college going.

By tradition, the adept duels went first. Here the absence of Arniel Gane and the flight of Orthorn were strongly felt in the glances that flitted through the room as Enthir and Nirya took up positions on opposite sides of the circle, stances squared, left hands raised before the face, right elbows drawn back.

On the sidelines, Savos Aren raised his arms, long volumous sleeves hanging from his elbows. “In this Mid-Summer and in sight of the forces of the Universe, we commit our finest pupils to demonstrate what they have learned this year. Spells are live, surrender must be honored, incapacitation is loss. May the best mage triumph.”

At the drop of his arms both duelists snapped into motion. Dueling was as much about countering your opponent’s strengths as it was about showing your own. Some duels began with both opponents in their corners drawing up a summons for some creature out of Oblivion. Those duels might be decided after the first casting, if one summoner clearly managed to snatch and bind a more powerful daedra. In some duels, each opponent stood fixed in position, weaving a prologue of protective fortifications which would culminate in an endgame of massive explosions.

An adept summer-duel was always a gorgeous show of skill and artistry. As Archmage Aren dropped his arms, Enthir leapt aside, barely avoiding the fireball that crashed into the pillar behind him. Nirya must have been holding the core of the spell while the Archmage spoke, a difficult and dangerous feat. Enthir’s left hand was working a basic defensive pattern while, independently, a hard cold light gathered in his right. He was waiting for something, Brelyna realized. She knew him, knew his skill with illusions. There must be some reason he was not opening with a flurry of confusions.

Nirya pivoted to follow his mad dash, a tall graceful turret. This time her fireball lead the target with flawless precision. Enthir skidded to reverse direction, but still was caught in the center of the blast. Enveloped in an inferno that might have ended the duel, his right and left hands came together, a thin shell of ice cracking and breaking around him while he remained untouched.

But while his sight of the battlefield was obscured by ice and fire, Nirya’s left hand finished drawing a sigil in the air. The audience, but not Enthir, saw where the rune settled and sank invisibly into the marble floor. When the clash of elements faded, Enthir stepped out with both hands outspread, covered in deep red shadow that flickered and shifted over his skin.

What followed was the epitome of elegant illusionist dueling. The key to watching an illusionist duel, Master Drevis taught, was to watch his opponent’s movements and extrapolate from them what she was seeing and feeling. Nirya gathered crackles of lightning in both hands, her change of tactics indicating that she knew she had already lost the power-duelist’s objective of winning in the opening moves. They circled warily, and Nirya conserved her strikes, lashing out at her ever-moving target with slow but deadly accuracy that made him stumble and made his green-brown skin begin to turn grey.

To a casual observer, Enthir was doing nothing in response but keeping a constant pattern of footwork around the room. But Brelyna watched his hands, pulling, pushing, and watched the way Nirya twitched and shied at things unseen from the corners of her eyes, the way she would lunge suddenly to a new position, the way she covered a great deal of ground, working her way across what was formerly Enthir’s side of the room. The way the illusionist’s eyes tracked not where she went, but where she did not go.

Still, he was out of time, and Nirya knew it. When a sizzling shock drove him twitching to his knees and the light around his hands faded, she shook off the cobwebs of his spells and advanced on him. Her chosen coup de grace was, of course, fire. But, her golden skin covered in a fine sheen of sweat, she had only the strength for one hand, arched upwards and sprouting licks of flame. Enthir’s eyes flickered to _that_ spot on the floor. He did not expend strength to stand, but tugged with both hands like a puppeteer gathering his strings. Tugged, drew, then as Nirya’s final fireball flew from her hand, he cut his spell loose upon her mind. Nirya did not get to enjoy the sight of her opponent collapsing, robes aflame, while the Master Healer’s golden tendrils reached out to envelop him. She turned from the sight, face unravelled in raw terror. She turned and ran right in the direction that Enthir’s last spell compelled her to run, and a second fiery blast threw her to the ground.

Archmage Aren was clapping enthusiastically while the Master Wizard’s pale healing scooped Nirya towards the sidelines. “Excellent, excellent! And the victor is, by a hairsbreadth, Adept Nirya! Well fought, both! Very well fought!”

Still trailing thick ropes of restoration anchored in the Masters’ hands, the two contestants picked themselves off the ground, clasped hands with rueful grins. As the Archmage announced the order of the Apprentice bouts, they put their heads together to whisper an animated deconstruction of the fight.

Brelyna and Onmund, seeded second and third, took up their positions on the floor after Master Drevis finished the obligatory sweep for residual spells and traps. Where adept duels were intricate dances, apprentice duels tended to be fast, brutal shows of force. While Brelyna opened by, predictably, hardening a shell of armor around her body, Onmund used the time to work his hand sidewise towards Oblivion, closing distance all the while. His left arm came up bearing a shield of air that looked solid as steel, and his right drew from an invisible sheath a sword whose blade was hammered from molten metaphysical concepts.

Brelyna let him come, let him step into the distance where she could not miss. Her flames erupted low, at his legs and feet, and he angled his shield downwards and charged. Simple speed allowed her to twist out of the way, though she was sure her armor could take a blow or two from that otherworldly weapon. She left a leg out in case his feet were placed just right for tripping, but her main attack was the left palm which swung at his face and deposited a glowing sticky ball.

He spun, slashing, blinded. She stepped around him, placed the knuckles of her right hand against the base of his neck, felt him stop and tense. Heat was radiating from her arm with the restrained spell. “Yield!” she called. They both knew she couldn’t hold it long.

Onmund whirled, blade crashing into her armor with a deep pressure against her ribs. Flame erupted from her hand directly into his face, washing away the little ball of magelight. Brelyna reeled from the backwash of heat, expecting to see his face blister an angry, painful red. Instead, she saw his eyes writhe a deep gold that overtook his cheery blue, and then devoured even the whites. He took a halting step forward, directly into her spray of fire, as she scrabbled backwards and added a second hand, her legs beginning to feel cold and leaden as she drew on the fire in her blood, as she called up memories of the choking smell of sulfur and ash, of a frightened little girl in her mother’s arms.

He took another step forward, into the hottest part of the blaze, raised his sword, and collapsed to the ground. Brelyna immediately reined in tight control over her runaway spell. Master Colette ran into the arena, but there was no need to fear. Onmund rolled over, golden ropes fading into his unmarked ruddy skin. “Damn,” he shook his head. “I just overextended, that’s all.”

Brelyna was declared victor, and sat drinking a honeyed potion during her allotted three-minute break. Drinking, and eying J’zargo limbering up across the room as if he were warming up for a footrace, not a mages’ duel. Enthir wove through the servants with a quill and parchment, taking down bets for the most anticipated fight of the day. When he passed her, he reached down and squeezed her shoulder. “Sorry,” he grinned, “can’t let contestants take bets. Good luck.”

She reached up fast enough to brush his fingers with her own. “Let’s see if I get a chance to use your trick.”

When the Archmage’s outspread hands dropped into the eager silence, both apprentices shot off an immediate opening volley. Brelyna knew full well that J’zargo’s speed with firebolts meant she would not have the time to weave armor. She gritted her teeth and dealt with the fire the mundane way, by dropping and rolling around on the marble. When she regained her feet, she saw that her aim had been a bit low, and her blinding spell was stuck to the Khajiit’s chin. Still, while he waited for it to wear off, he was not wasting his energy on poorly aimed attacks. He was laying down a network of invisible tripwires to prevent her from closing close enough to use her spray of fire.

Brelyna breathed, centered herself, and closed her eyes. She recalled the touch of Enthir’s thin fingers brushing against her lashes. _Eyes see the surface-world of things,_ he’d said. _The world of illusions. You don’t need eyes, to see._

And she didn’t. She was a spider in a web, sensing the thrumming vibration of power around her. It was more than a spell, _clairvoyance_. It was a state of being. She started walking forward, slowly, confidently, flame pooling in her open palms. On some level, she knew that it was not a plan, that J’zargo could hit her at least once before she got near him, but somehow that was far less important than the way she felt just right, slipping through and around his maze as if it didn’t exist, perturbing not a thing with her passage.

Pain slammed into her, and she was on the ground, gasping into the warm glow of healing. A stub-fingered furred hand extended down into her vision, and she pulled herself up. “Show-off,” he poked at her.

“If I’m going to lose, I might as well look damn good doing it.”

The last duel was the shortest. Despite his break and his potions, Onmund looked tired, slow out there. He fought with sword and shield again, and got one good cut in, but J’zargo showed some use of tactics and sapped him with lightning. It didn’t take much to make him lose his binding on the sword and yield.

Duels over, motion and conversation returned to the hall. Nirya came over to offer some pointers on that last fight. Brelyna watched the Masters convene in a tight knot to one side, voices low. Briefly, Colette Marence’s shrill tones rose in unmistakeable indignation, but she was quickly hushed. Faralda, the Master of Destruction, shrugged her thin shoulders and looked over at the waiting apprentices. But it was the way Mirabelle Ervine’s deep frown lines creased, the way she gestured at her own chest and shook her head at the Archmage’s dismissive sweep of a hand, that made Brelyna think the Masters were discussing something more serious than duels. J’zargo paced in eager anticipation.

In the end, the Khajiit apprentice claimed his winner’s prize, a gem heavy with the soul of a frost atronach. But it was Brelyna that Archmage Aren approached, her arm that he raised in the air as he announced that one apprentice, in recognition of her improvement, had been chosen to accompany Master Faralda on a mission.

Two days later, J’zargo was not such a sore sport that he would skip out of seeing her off. He chucked her on the shoulder and made her promise that she’d come back having learned _something_ from the taciturn Master Destructor. Onmund, the warm broad-shouldered Nord bulk of him, wrapped her up in a hug that tingled with a spark that might have been unconscious magic. He pressed a parcel into her hands which was unmistakably the size and shape of a sweetroll. He shrugged and said it was a good-luck wish from Nan in the kitchens. His cheeks turned ruddier as he dropped a peck onto her forehead. That, he said, was a good-luck wish from him. Enthir, true to character, stood in the background with arms crossed and hip cocked. She had to practically order him to come give her a hug. But when he did, and brushed a lock of long black hair from her face, his slanted red eyes were narrowed with worry. “Remember,” he said by way of good-bye, “eyes see the world of illusion.”

Five days later, she was standing in a vast stone ritual chamber lit by more candles than she could count. She was out of breath, her left side covered in burns, dizzy with the knowledge that she had not enough magic left to summon even the weakest shield. Next to her, Orthorn the Altmer adept was a shadow of his former self, face gaunt and head shaved. Faralda stood tall, lightning dancing across her fingertips, facing the woman swathed in shimmering violet-black robes in the center of the room. At the Master Destructor’s next words, Orthorn’s knees gave out and he sank soundlessly to the floor.

“Really. Is that the best you can do?” The woman she would only know as the Caller replied in a voice so melodious it hurt to hear. “Two apprentices for three books? You should have brought another.”

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

_Lying in the cell. Orthorn hadn’t moved in hours. Still breathing. Touching, touching everywhere. The razor on her head. Other cells, shaved women with hungry eyes. Screams and fire and pain and screams. The blood, blood everywhere. Gagging on potions. The night they brought him back, and he was different. When they came for her, and she fought, and then lying on cool dew in the dark grass. And the way she rolled him over and he begged her to run, but his hand was a vise on her wrist and teeth showed when he panted and pulled her down, and black blood welled and covered him when she brought the dagger down again and again. The cold shock of the river where she washed, and the mad run across the fields, and the scratchy smell of hay, and the terror of an Altmer woman’s face staring down at her…_

It was the third, the Altmer farmwife said in the morning. The third of which month? Of Sun’s Height. Brelyna looked around as the woman pulled her glowering husband away and they spoke softly. She was wearing a shift that was not her own, in a bed not her own. There was a book on the bedside table, and books were somehow very important. She screwed up her eyes to make out the upside-down title. The Woodcutter’s Wife. _I know that one,_ she thought. And when Curwe the farmwife sat on the bed and gently asked her name, asked where she came from, Brelyna gave a new name, and remembered only the barest details about the bandits in Eastmarch who took her from her home in hatred against her race. She promised to stay on and help with the harvest, in exchange for soup and bread and a patch of hay to sleep on. At night her thoughts turned again and again to the way, after five days’ travel together, after five days of amicable conversation about college history and spell theory, the Master Destructor had offered her so calmly in trade. Her thoughts turned again and again to the ending of _The Woodcutter’s Wife_ , when the wife grows wary of the mage who is a guest in her house, until one night she raises up her husband’s axe and cuts the mage’s head from his shoulders. Her thoughts turned often to Onmund and Enthir, to J’zargo and even to Nirya. To the last two years and all the things she’d learned since coming to the College, about magic but also about friendship and about the normal lives that people lived when they weren’t cooped up in an underground stronghold with the last three-dozen mad, paranoid members of House Telvanni. She thought of the time they had built ice fortresses atop the dormitory tower, and skipped classes to pelt each other with balls of snow. Her birthday, when they had all piled onto her narrow bed and passed mead around, the first time she had tried moon-sugar. The way they had pulled together in Saarthal, kicking doors open and sweeping rooms with coordinated curtains of fire. At the College of Winterhold, the destination of the most eminent scholars in Tamriel, she’d found the childhood she’d never had. How many other apprentices had fallen in love with the place before it had killed them? Too many little pieces fit together in her mind. Conversations between Faralda and Savos Aren. The way Mirabelle Ervine’s eyes followed them around the courtyard. Colette Marence’s indignation, Toldfir’s absence, the way Master Falion left in a huff last year, Master Phinis’ reluctance to take his place. The former student living in the inn, and who still spoke with him and who didn’t. Soul gems, necromancy, vampirism… whispered talk that the College was once known for Conjuration, but now no longer. Sorcerers and hedge-mages on the rise across Skyrim, dwindling admissions. Dead students. Dead students. Always dead students.

There was no question about it. She had to go back, if only to make sure her friends got out of there before it was too late.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

Nazir stood, heaved his unconscious target onto his horse, and mounted up behind her. If he had turned back for a last look, he might have seen a faint golden glow in the shadow beneath the walls of Whiterun. But he had no reason to turn back.

Brelyna sat up, gasping. She fell back onto her side. She yanked a dagger from her belly. She dragged herself through dirt and mud, thinking only that she had to get away, that she had to keep moving. Eventually, she managed to scramble to her feet. She didn’t need a torch—a faint glow like moonlight lit the ground beneath her, and it took some confusion before she realized that the glow was coming from her own skin. _How do I turn it off?_ She was desperately aware that the light of magic would be visible far across the plains of Whiterun. But she had no control over her stumbling body. She felt hot, heady, and it was all she could do to keep moving as delirium overtook her.

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

She was breaking into a thin sheen of sweat beneath the sun’s height, working the ground with a pitching fork to pry up mounds of dirt around each plant, shaking the soil off the potatoes before placing them in the basket she tugged along behind her. She exulted in the work, in the warmth of the earth between her toes, in the green vital smell. It was so different from another life she might have lived, long ago, in a land where it was always winter.

Curwe was carrying a bucket heavy with fresh milk, leaning back against the weight. She set it down and a bit of cream sloshed over and was swallowed by dark churned soil. She dipped cupped hands and drank, winking at Brelyna. “Come on, then. Just don’t tell the Nords.” Curwe was a handsome Altmer woman, lines etched into her worn golden skin where she laughed easily and often. So different from another, haughtier face. “I’ve been thinking about the herb garden again,” she started. “Do you know anything about herbs?”

And Brelyna didn’t think about an eerie, beautiful garden high in a tower covered in snow, with one of every magical plant that grew in Skyrim. She didn’t think about pilfering garlic and elves’ ear from smoky kitchens. She didn’t think about the fact that alchemy was craftsmen’s work, unbefitting a practitioner and a Telvanni. Down here in the south plants were abundant and luxurious: the clean sweet smell of lavender, the tickling softness of tundra cotton, the riot of color from mountain flowers. She smiled up, blinking against the sun. “Herbs can’t be much harder than potatoes, and they might fetch a prettier price.”

But the week when Loreius—even his wife called him Loreius—the week when Loreius took ill to bed, it was Brelyna who crushed wheat and blue flowers and boiled them in a covered pot to catch the steam, making him breathe it in and then drink the tea for good measure. And it was then that the brown-tanned man with the veins in his arms and gravel in his voice opened rheumy eyes and said, “Elyn, listen. I’m glad the gods sent you to us.”

And it was a few nights later, after he’d recovered and was away in the fields in the gathering dusk, that Curwe sat darning shirts in her chair and told Brelyna that they’d always wanted children, but it was hard enough for a mer to conceive even with her own kind. And Brelyna asked what it was like to love a man who would die so soon. Curwe looked sad, and she said, “We elves live many lives in one body. After Loreius is gone there will still be a woman called Curwe, and she will go elsewhere and live again, as she has done before. But she will not quite be me, because loving Loreius is a part of who I am.” And Brelyna thought of how in two centuries lived underground, wasn’t it sad that she hadn’t known love? And, her heart fluttered, how would she recognize it if she’d never felt it before? Because sometimes, in that magical castle on the edge of the world, sometimes she’d wondered.

There was a nip in the air on the day Loreius loaded the harvest-heavy barrels and hitched the cow to the cart. Curwe came striding up from the road. “There’s a strange little man whose axel is broken. He’s asking for help.” She grasped her husband’s sleeve. “He’s carrying a coffin, there could be anything in there. Smugglers and such. I don’t like it.” Loreius went down to sort the man out and came back fuming and grumbling. “Mad as a box of frogs.” He looked from the road to the house and back. “I don’t want him here while I’m gone.” And so it was that he asked—he trusted—Brelyna to make the trip to town and settle their credit with Ysolda while Curwe went to fetch a guard and Loreius sat on his porch with the pitching fork, watching the road.

There was a nip in the air, and all the morning’s slow plod to Whiterun she thought of how when she came back she would have to tell them, these good people who had taken her in, she would have to tell them that she couldn’t stay. There was a nip in the air, and if she was going to walk all the way to Winterhold, she would have to do it before the deep winter froze over the passes. She would also need warm furs, and good boots, a bedroll and flint and a dozen other things that she did not have the money for, and she could not stand the thought that these people who had given her so much would press on her more than they could spare.

“I am looking for a woman—a Redguard, like me,” the red-hooded man by the Whiterun stable called to her in passing. “I will pay for any information regarding her location.”

A beautiful wood-elf sat down next to her on the steps in the Jarl’s hall. She had to look twice—at first she thought he was a figment of her imagination, an echo of her conscience. At first, she thought he was someone else.

 _How many of them, do you think, really care about each other, about other people?_ she asked. And she thought: _Am I wrong for what I am about to do?_

She had never imagined there could be people in this world like Curwe and Loreius. People who took in a stranger they knew nothing about and showed her kindness, helped her see that family could extend beyond bloodline. Curwe and Loreius were rare, precious good people. Far better people than she. Because if it would get her back to Winterhold, if it would get her back to the people she loved, she would sell a stranger’s life. There was no real question in her mind. There were so few good people, such small chance that some stranger was actually a boon to the world. _Let me have Curwe and Loreius, Enthir and Onmund and J’zargo and Nirya, Nan and Mirabelle Ervine and Master Tolfdir,_ she thought. _The rest of the world can burn._

(-S-)          (-S-)          (-S-)

Dawn rose over the eastern peaks. She was nearly home. Her hand felt stiff where it was glued to her belly with blood. She couldn’t tell anymore whether she was glowing, and she feared to look whether the magic had closed the wound. She felt exhausted, empty past being empty, as if her body was wrung inside out and she was slowly beginning to digest her own flesh…

The hill up to the farmhouse was too much. She crawled in the dirt on her hands and knees and cried weakly for help. Surely they would hear, surely they would come out and strong hands would take her up and help her inside where there was warm water and linens to wrap up tight…

She hauled herself up the porch steps to the door, pounded on it, crying hot tears of relief. The door rattled under her fist, and she saw that it was unlocked. She pulled it open, and—

Loreius was sprawled in front of the bed in his nightshirt and britches, one leg at a grotesque angle. His eyes and mouth were wide open, and blood still pumped hotly from a dozen knife wounds.

Curwe lay face-down by the banked fireplace, her head smashed unrecognizable against the stone lip, something grey and stringy tangled in her hair.

Brelyna screamed and screamed.


End file.
